Blog Title: Small Business Blogging with Andy Wibbels

12 Firefox Keyboard Shortcuts You'll Actually Use

Sitting here waiting for the New Year and Ron to get back from the airport. Typed this out:

I live my life in Firefox and Outlook and mostly Firefox. Here's a few keystrokes combos I use to be more of a browser-ninja.

1. Ctrl N or ⌘N to open a new browser window.
2. Ctrl T or ⌘T to open a new tab.
3. Ctrl Tab to cycle through open tabs. Hold down the control key and tab Tab to advance.
4. Shift Ctrl Tab to cycle backwards through open tabs.
5. Ctrl L or ⌘L to put the cursor in the address bar.You don't have to take your hand off the keyboard to grab the mouse and click it.
6. Press the Spacebar scrolls to the next screen of content. Be sure your cursor isn't in a field.
7. Alt Tab or ⌘Tab to cycle through open applications. Not really Firefox-specific, but when you have tons of windows open it helps to find where you are. Add a Shift to cycle backwards.
8. Alt Left Arrow to go back to the previous page in your history.
9. Alt Right Arrow to go forwards in your browsing history.
10. Cltr + to increase text size. Ctrl - reduces it.
11. Ctrl W to close a browser tab.
12. Ctrl S to save the current web page to your hard drive. If you want the full page save the 'complete' page which will grab the images and media as well. Otherwise it just grabs the HTML.

Photo by Foomandoonian

Seth Stevenson Extracts Marketing Advice from the Shamwow Guy

I just stood hypnotized in the living room watching the Shamwow commercial again:

I've seen these carnie type salesguys at the Great American Hellhole known as the Kentucky Flea Market which takes place every month at the Kentucky State Fairgrounds. It is truly a wonder to behold with all manner of junk, treasure and mullets. There is something engaging about the smoothness of delivery. The effortless sell that has just enough aggressive edge to move products.

A quick Google search brought up this article on Vince, the Shamwow guy from Slate's Seth Stevenson: He's got a great backstory involving lawsuits against the Church of Scientology and Anna Nicole Smith.

Quotes from the Slate article:

• 'The first thing I notice is the physical grace. Vince puts the Shamwow through its paces with the fluid dexterity of a three-card monte dealer. Cleaning up spills appears not just effortless, but fun.
• 'There's a genius, too, in his hectoring tone. He makes us feel like idiots for even entertaining the notion of not buying a Shamwow.'
• 'Vince's abrasive manner might also mark a unique, new strategy in the annals of pitchdom. TV salespeople tend to be warmly enthusiastic, not confrontational.' [As compared to Screamy McScreamsalot pitchman Billy Mays who advises us to shut your whore mouth]
• "What I think I like about Vince is that he is upfront and seemingly comfortable with his schtick. He appears to be saying, 'I am a carnie huckster, you know it and I know it, but that's OK because this product is that good.' "

The Keyword Cloud (or How to Read Minds)

Last week we talked about how your content is like a net. You cast it out into the internet muck and search engines help you nab the right meaty prospects. This week I want to introduce a concept I call the keyword cloud and how to use it to come up with post titles, product names and other bits of netting that can reel in prospects and customers. Veterans of my Keywords Essentials class will experience some deja vu. Veterans of my Keywords Essentials class will experience some deja vu.

Take a five second consideration of all of the internet searches you have done in the last week. If you are a Google user go to http://www.google.com/history/ so see a complete history of all of your searches (and to seriously freak yourself out). Click on Trends and you'll see other stats. I've searched for 15,553 things in the past year:

Each one of these searches says a little bit about me. A little bit about who I am, what I'm looking for, what I might purchase, what worries me, what excites me, what captivates me... You can read my mind to find out exactly what I'm thinking about at any given time. Search histories have even been used in courts for murder trials (i.e. 'undetectable poinsons', or 'neck snap break').

Now what if we could direct this process to our future customers?

Nobody Knows Who You Are

To best understand this approach to keywords and search engine strategy, it is important to keep in mind that most people have no idea who you are. They may have problems that you can solve or a burning need for your services, but they have no idea that you are an expert in such things. So when faced with that big search box what do they type in?

People Search for What They Know Already

We muddle through this life, don't we? Often we don't know exactly how to articulate what we are looking for so we'll get as close to what we want as possible using language and concepts we already know.

Since your prospects don't know who you are, they are doing the same thing. They don't know that you are an expert in dog grooming but they are looking for the best dog shampoo. They don't know that you are a relationships expert but they are looking for how to sharing child custody with a jerk (shout out to Heidi!). They search using words and terms and concepts that they already know.

What Orbits Your Niche?

Out of all of the possible things I could type into a search engine to find you - assuming I don't know your name or business - which ones would be orbiting you and your niche? I might type in a book title or a famous celebrity that has talked about the issues I'm facing - issues that you can help solve. I search for what I already know that is close to what I'm looking for, what I'm trying to solve or what I'm trying to do. I call this the keyword cloud:

At the center is your topic or niche or focus, around it are all the peripheral things orbiting your topic - the books, people, places, events, etc. that are connected to the topic - and to you.

Here's some sample tactics:

1. Blog the top books in your niche. Write reviews. Interview the author. Interview experts. Interview skeptics. Create a study guide.
2. Blog the top associations in your niche. Write up their upcoming events. Their most visible experts (or outcasts). Blog from the events. Post pictures of the events. Write up the events you'll be attending - interview the presenters after, before or during the event. Write up a guide to the city where the conference is held. Write about the challenge the association or industry is facing.

The elements in the keyword cloud above are just a small list of the taxonomy you can use.

Go to your local bookstore and go to the section that matches your niche. Stare at the bookcase and notice what words, ideas and authors pop out at you. Grab a magazine your niche subscribes to - what words pop out on that?

Those Weren't Shoes

Actually the journalist had yelled BLOG and those weren't shoes.



I haven't seen this much controversy since Hugo Chavez quoted my book to the United Nations.

Content is a Net

So we've talked about niches, lifestyles, why we buy, why we go online and the three buttons. But what motivates us to actually go online in pursuit of more control over our lives?

The Four Types of Internet Marketing

Last week we talked about Why We Go Online which revolved around Entertainment (changing your emotional state), Utility (how-to's, news and reviews) and Community (sharing). This is all part of all the 'stuff' that happens before someone clicks the Search button or goes looking for solutions to their urgent problems or celebrations of their deepest passions. After they view search results, a customer comes into your orbit and you convince them to become a part of your prospect pool.

There are dozens of formats and channels available to you as an internet marketer. The point of all of these channels is to direct someone into your subscription list - to get them to join your list so you can begin to cultivate those contacts into becoming customers.

Just like search engines. Your marketing and content is like a giant net you hold in your teeth and you throw it out into the muck hoping to grab the right critters.

But first we have to talk about shrimping.

Meaty Treats in the Nasty Muck

When I was a kid our yearly vacation was a week at Pawley's Island, South Carolina a slightly shabby island of private homes. They only rented to families and we would join a couple other families for a week of reading, eating, sand and sun. One of the dads worked at the Ford plant in Louisville and would snag some truck tire innertubes for us to sit in as we bobbed along in the ocean (we lashed them all together with rope). My dad would also go shrimping with a big cast net. It was a big circular plastic net with weights on the outside ring and a rope in the middle. You fling the net out into the marsh and it opens up into a disc shape. Then the weights drag it down into the water and mud to get the shrimp (you had to grip part of it with your teeth and hope you timed the throw correctly and not lose an incisor). Then, as you pull the net out it closes around your catch, bringing a dozen or so shrimp for dinner.

The tastiest shrimp can be found in the nastiest muck.

As an internet marketer, your content is your net. The murky water and muck is the internet with all the people in the world searching for whatever is motivating them to go online. Tossing your net is your attempt to grab the right shrimp - the right meaty nuggets that might become your prospects.

Your blog posts, articles, postcards, radio interviews, brochures - all of this content is optimized to build your list of prospects.

For now, take the whole search engine optimization piece out of the puzzle. I'm focusing on the tactics we use to get people in front of (and hopefully clicking) your Subscribe button.

Your tactics can be graphed along two axes:

1. Our horizontal (x) axis is mode: Is this content strategy online or offline?
2. Our vertical (y) axis is cost: How much does this content cost to deploy? Is it free or is there a fee involved?

Here's our matrix (mixing it up - no Venn this week):

Before you continue reading just take 10 seconds to come up with at least one content strategy you already use in each of these four areas:

1. What is one free, online tactic you use in your internet marketing?
2. What is one free, offline tactic you use in your internet marketing?
3. What is one paid, online tactic you use in your internet marketing?
4. What is one paid, offline tactic you use in your internet marketing?

Now let's take in some detail:

Free, Online Marketing Tactics

Our first quadrant (quadrant #1 for you Covey freaks) is free, online marketing tactics.

This is probably where you'll spend the most time experimenting. Online tactics are usually easier to get started, quicker to measure and quicker to discontinue. Here's several of them:

• Email signature
• Discussion forum signature
• Blog posts
• Email newsletter
• RSS feed
• Podcast
• Blog directories
• Podcast directories
• RSS directories
• Article directories
• Social bookmarking sites
• Social networking sites
• Newsletter ad exchange
• Comments on other blogs
• Viral video
• Local-focused sites and directories
• Search-engine friendly HTML
• Webcast seminars
• Instant messaging and Skype profiles
• Viral PDFs
• Contest sponsorship
• Blog carnivals
• Organic search traffic
• Link exchange
• Group blogging project
• Guest posting on other blogs
• Joint-venture referrals

Free, Offline Marketing Tactics

Sometimes you'll actually leave the house and use offline tactics - but there's still some free ones:

• Speaking engagements
• Newspaper article
• Column in newspaper or magazine
• Networking events
• TV appearance
• Radio appearance
• Organizing or volunteering at events
• Teleseminars

Paid, Online Marketing Tactics

Third, we have free, offline marketing tactics.

Just like the free online tactics, the paid ones allow you to deploy and measure quickly and usually test out in small batches with less cost outlay:

• Pay-per-click (AdWords)
• Social network ads (Facebook ads)
• Ads on other blogs
• Ads on other sites
• Placement in another's ezine
• Affiliate/referral program
• Paid placement on a site
• Paid link exchange
• Blog sponsorship
• Press release
• Podcast sponsorship
• RSS advertising

Paid, Offline Marketing Tactics

Finally, we have fee-based, paid offline marketing tactics.

I feel these are the more 'thoughtful' tactics to use when you've road-tested the other tactics and have the resources to go all out.

• Postcards
• Radio ad
• Television ad
• Infommercial
• Print newsletter
• Magazine ad
• Newspaper ad
• Pay-to-play speaking engagement
• Sales staff
• Business cards
• Professional associations
• Events and seminars
• Telemarketing

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this very well - it is a bit half-baked right now so I need your help articulating it.

What I'm trying to express is that all the content you put out in the world - whether it is offline or online, in person or in print or on the radio - all of this content ideally is focused on bringing more prospects into your orbit. The right prospects. Not a shotgun of crap traffic. All of these prospects are being targeted to your Subscribe button. After that is the courtship where we begin to cultivate and acclimate them to our expertise, products and services so when they have a problem we can solve, they come to us first to solve it - that's the Buy button.

Another way to think of this is an ever-flowing stream of searches and requests and queries like a cool mountain creek. Can you divert the right amount of flow your way and channel it correctly?

What am I missing? Tell me right now:

Why We Go Online

So we've talked about niches, lifestyles, why we buy, and the three buttons. But what motivates us to actually go online in pursuit of more control over our lives?

Why We Go Online

Back when I unveiled my megalomaniac vision to create a framework for internet marketing called Instant Global Impact, I outlined the model as the customer's path along three 'clicks' or buttons.

Last week we started with what happens before someone clicks Search by looking at Why We Buy things. Now let's see why they we go online.

Release the Kraken Venn!

Entertainment aka 'Boobies and Farts'

This one is easy. How much of our web surfing is about entertainment? Whether it is a fake sports drink commercial or the Gwen Verdon/Fosse hip hop remix of a Fosse routine on Ed Sullivan (later remixed to Beyone's new song which was dance-synced and then remixed again) or watching Ron and I react to the notorious Two Girls One Cup, so much of our daily info-intake is about entertainment.

I'm including a broad category of things in 'entertainment':

• Diversions - Anything that makes you forget the pain of your sad little life.
• Distractions - Anything that provides an easy-reach to not deal with what is in front of you.
• Confirmation - Anything that reminds you are a beautiful and unique snowflake.
• Aggravation - Reading news or views that make you mad or get you jacked up (find this a great pick-me-up in the afternoons). Some of us are driven by dis-satisfaction.

What is key here is the urge to change or reinforce your emotional state. To feel something different, to feel something, anything. Conversely - it can be the exact opposite: entertainment to numb us or distract us from what is going on around us. Pretty much the entire programming of the E! Channel.

Utility aka 'What's that rash?'

Another aspect to our daily online usage is utility. "The answer may surprise you!" "Are you at risk?" "Are your children safe?" Fearmongering is an old tradition in marketing (and politics). A lot of our surfing can be connected to online research. How to do something, recipes for success, reviews of what works or what to buy (or what not to) and other information. Our burning need to diagnose that burning sensation. Or how to tame the world around us. Or the people around us. Looks for headlines like '7 Steps to...' or '10 common mistakes...' The vein of 'control' runs through this.

Community aka 'Me too!'

I used to stop right above with just Entertainment and Utility. But I've gradually added Community to the mix.

If there is one thing the internet teaches us, it is:

There's always a bigger freak than you.

Whether it is news anchors or shoes or strobe light photography, there is always someone out there who is just a bit more nuts about something than you are. This is the lesson of fetish. Communities spring up around practices and obsessions: furries and fan fic, etc.

Community can have a very loose definition. Sure it includes straightforward forums where you have to login and there's rules and a whole set of norms to learn but it is also as loose as blog comments or Facebook friending - and you gradually start to see the same people orbit the same topics or sites.

Communities re-affirm each individual and re-affirm the group identity as well. 'I thought I was the only one!' Think of sports fans or Harry Potter fans or - good God - the pro-ana crazies. To share and celebrate is a huge human impulse and the internet allows us to do this with utmost speed and access.

I tried to explain this to one of my cousins during Thanksgiving when she was talking about Facebook and all the stuff people use to trick out their profiles. I said 'You like scrapbooking right?' She answered, 'Oh I love scrapbooking!' And I said, 'It is the same thing, just digital!'

What am I missing? How do you cultivate these three ideas in your blogging and online business? Tell me right now:

Common Passions, Urgent Problems

A niche is made of two parts:

Part 1: A group of people with a set of urgent problems or common passions. Not just everyday run-of-the-mill problems because people are more likely to click the Buy button when they know you are going to help them ease urgent discomfort. I keep 'common passions' in there because people who aren't desperate for solutions might buy things that fit their super-active lifestyle revolving around Jeeps or home-schooling or body modification. Common passions are tied to possibility while urgent problems are tied to fear of a tragic future.

Part 2 : A niche is a group of people that is actually a group - a findable, reachable, 'talk-to'-able group. They must be reachable either online or offline, through conferences or newsletters or magazines. If they don't 'hang out' somewhere at sometime you don't have a niche. You have a whole bunch of people that have a common problem but don't identify or communicate together.

Why to Direct Your Efforts to a Niche

If we take our Time-Money-Sex Venn from last week and apply it to why you might use a niche in your marketing efforts we get:

Time: Focusing on a niche saves times because you are only talking to a small set of people. You have simplified your message and efforts and products to a specific group that will be more likely to vibrate with what you are saying. You don't aim for speaking engagements at conferences everywhere - just the right places where these people hang out. You don't read every online forum you can find, but the specific ones where your folks are likely to be commiserating and celebrating.

Money: Your marketing efforts are more affordable because you are constraining who you are are reaching. You are laser-focused instead of a shotgun splat. Because you make products and services for a specific group of people they are willing to pay more for information tailored especially for them.

Visibility: It is easier to build credibility with a smaller group of people than trying to break out into the mainstream too quickly. Small fish, big pond. This is how I built my profile as a blogging expert. I started off working with business and life coaches, helping them understand blogs and their impact to business. Since this community is relatively small and also connected by discussion forums and lists it was easier to build a brand as 'the blog guy' than trying to attack the greater market at large.

How to Send Andy into a Blind Rage

Few things drive me quicker to a Wibbels fit (video) than when I ask someone their niche and they give an answer that isn't a niche but an entire demographic.

Here is a little scene using my favorite example. I'm talking to an entrepreneur who we'll call Wit:

Andy: What kind of customers do you work with?

Wit: Women in transition.

Andy: So what kind of women?

Wit: Oh ya know, professional women.

Andy: Any certain industry?

Wit: No, everybody. Oh and moms.

Andy: What kind of transition?

Wit: A new job, a new child, kids going off to school, death of a parent, newly divorced.

Andy: Any specific one?

Wit: Not really. Whatever challenges women face so they can step more fully into their [insert post-pagan Gaia-esque women who run with wolves from Venus who are just not that in to you metaphor here].

Usually by this time my heart rate has quickened and I'm trying to do Dr. Glassman's trigger exercise to keep from getting a little irrational.

Emotional Cripples with PDFs

Women in transition is half the planet.

1. Women make up roughly half the human population of the planet.
2. Everybody is in transition all the time. Stasis is an illusion and you're just ignoring a Niagra.

So basically when you say you create products and services for 'women in transition' (or as I like to call them, WITs) you are really just indecisive and haven't done your homework and are probably pretty surprised you haven't had Oprah-magnitude success. You're just an emotional cripple with PDFs.

Yes, if you are running a business local to a city or county you have constrained your pool of prospects considerably, but I'm talking more in the realm of the internet where just because you can market to everybody doesn't mean you should. Let's look at some real niches:

Passaportes Fotografias

Each morning on my walk to Six Apart down Folsom to 4th, I pass the Mexican consulate and there are usually about 3 dozen men, women and children waiting in line for the offices to open at 9. Just as you pass the building you see a sign on the sidewalk that says 'Pasaportes Fotografias' (might be vice versa).

There, a young guy has a white background anchored to the outside wall of the building, a camera and tripod, a small table with a clipboard and a little fence for crowd control. Genius.

A defined audience and he is right there where they are to help them solve one very specific urgent problem.

I was going to take a picture but didn't want him to think I was some kind of Minuteman.

Aryan Outfitters

Mother Jones did a photo essay on a woman who specializes in creating the uniforms and white robes for America's sweethearts, the Ku Klux Klan.

Coming from five generations of Ku Klux Klan members, 58-year-old "Ms. Ruth" sews hoods and robes for Klan members seven days a week, blessing each one when it's done. A red satin outfit for an Exalted Cyclops, the head of a local chapter, costs about $140. She uses the earnings to help care for her 40-year-old quadriplegic daughter, "Lilbit," who was injured in a car accident 10 years ago.

Sure it isn't a particularly pleasant niche - but the practical matter is racists need someone to make their uniforms (you don't think a man with the rank of Exalted Cyclops is going to reduce himself to sewing do you?). Mrs. Ruth has found a group with a common problem: they need uniforms for their racist country club - a community unto itself. Even racists need a durable hem.

Common (though misplaced) passions, urgent problems (Oh dear what ever shall I wear to the cross-burning potluck?), reachable and findable.

And if for some reason the Obama presidency suddenly makes trips to the KKK Mart obsolete, Mrs. Ruth could flip to another niche that needs constant uniform creation and maintenance and upgades: Girl Scouts.

Burqini

This is my favorite example of niche.

Hijab is the Muslim code of dress recommended by the Qur'an. Depending on your heritage, sect or family tradition, women (and men) adhere to various levels of modesty. Many Muslim women see their choice to wear a head-covering or other combinations of required garments as a connection to their past, their God, their family and as a way of re-claiming the burqa or hijab head-scarf for themselves.

But what if you want to go swimming? Previously, the traditional clothing sidelined many moms on the beach, unable to play in the water with their kids. Even more far-fetched: what if you wanted to be a lifeguard? On Cronulla Beach in Sydney, the first class of Muslim lifeguards joined the rest of the team sporting a new swimsuit:

Among them were a number of women wearing a newly designed head-to-toe swimsuit, dubbed the burqini. The two-piece outfit - featuring leggings, a loose top and a head covering - enables them to carry out their tasks while conforming to the Islamic dress code. Mecca Laa Laa, 20, one of the newly graduated lifeguards, said it would give Australian Muslim women the freedom to enjoy the beach while fulfilling their religious obligations. "The point is to get women active in the water, to encourage them to participate in sporting activities ... and wearing the burqini allows them to do that," she said.

And the Burqini has taken the world by storm as Muslim moms and girls reclaim the ocean and the swimming pool as a place for them as well.

See the niche? A findable, reachable group of people with a common passion and an urgent problem! How much is marketing about finding the how we can have it both ways?

Going to the site for the burqini there is a whole page of testimonials that illustrate how the business owners are completely tapped into what their customers want:

I went inside the pool with two of my kids! It was such a nice feeling to be able to actually be inside the water FULLY - not half of the body, or the feet, only. Alhamdulillah! Didn't have that chance for a long long long time. The last time I had a full dip inside the water was during my primary school years I think. I have nearly forgotten how it feels. And you know how I felt on that day, wearing aheda's swimsuit? I felt FREEDOM! I can be in the water without any feeling of self-conscious[ness]. A real freedom for me. [emphasis mine]

Yes, from my Roman Catholic upbringing in the United States this seems a bit silly: playing games with scripture so you can do what you want but still adhere to the rules (but we cherry-pick Leviticus to our own ends, don't we?). I get the same giggles watching an Orthodox Jewish friend navigate Shabbat without touching electronic devices and wondering why would God want to deny you the convenience of technology (flipside: the focused meditation brings closer awareness to divinity, etc). Inconvenience as meditation is present in so many of the world's religions (and fish on Fridays is still no analog to hanging on a cross).

What are three urgent problems your niche is facing? Be specific! Not just 'they are sad' but what specifically they might want to do to change their lives (freedom, control, power, etc)?

What are three common passions that bring your niche together? Be specific! Not just 'food folks and fun' but gunning their Harleys and peeling off into the night.

What are three online hangouts for your niche? Forums, lists, blog comments, chat rooms.

What are three offline hangouts for your niche? Conferences, trade assocations, magazines, cruises, cafes.

What makes sense in this essay? What doesn't? What am I missing? What typo is driving you batty? Tell me right now:

Time, Money, Sex (and Salvation)

Last week I walked through the frameworks in art and technology and how they can be applied to just about any discipline - unveiling my own framework in the process. We looked at The Three Buttons that divide up the sales cycle: Search (prospect looks for answers and finds you), Subscribe (they become a part of your network and you cultivate the relationship) and Buy (they buy your products and services).

This week I want to look at attacking the ever-thorny issue of Why We Buy:

There are a lot of reasons why we plunk down money for stuff. In this case, I'm separating wants from needs. We need water and food and shelter and all those Maslow things. We want a Senate bid, ripped abs, passive revenue and our own island (or at least I do and besides, Ron would look smashing in a Jackie Onassis pillbox hat). I'm talking about things that we want so much that we're willing to convince ourselves that we need them.

I cook this down to three categories (cue Venn diagram - I am loving PowerPoint 2007!).

Time, Money and You-Know-What

Stay with me.

Most of the reasons we spend money on things we don't really need are tied to one of these three areas. Let's take them one by one.

Time

So much of our daily marketing intake is promising more results in less time. Our busy and active lifestyle is driving us nutty and we need to be able to pack in more more more. We want to have it both ways (spend a day looking at every marketing message you see and try and find the how it convinces us we can have it both ways).

How do your products and services help me make time for what is important? Quality time, family time, workout time, reading time, meditation time, church time. Time for the things that are crucial that often get overshadowed by workity-work-work.

How do your product and services help me have more leisure time? This is a mix of the above two. Part of being middle-to-upper class is having time to spend on pointless shit. Well, pointless in terms of 'not getting you closer to your Nobel Prize.' You know what I mean.

And efficiency. How do you products and services help me use the time I have better? Extract more value? Get more things done so I can have more leisure.

So take out a piece of paper and write out three ways your products and services help people save time. A corollary is that the time to 'install' or 'learn' is worth the payoff in saved time.

What are three ways your products and services help others have more time?

Money

It makes the world go round (thanks Kander/Ebb). Sometimes it grosses me out how much blogging has become only about making lots of money (irony). But especially in the current global econalypse money is more important than ever ibecause it keeps us free from worry. The gospel of prosperity promises that God wants us to be rich and that being poor is a moral failing (ergo the super-rich are blessed). Abundance and scarcity battle it out in our heads, our dreams, our bank accounts and global commerce.

How do your products and services help people create more wealth? Whittle down their expenses?

Money is about luxury. Having more than enough. Profligacy. Conspicuous consumption. Spending money to spite others. I'm always amazed at how The Great Depression has echoed three generations down to my own midnight money panic attacks.

What are three ways your products and services help others make money?

S'e,x

Back when I was writing and directing plays, part of my approach was to get my actors to 'act from their DNA.' That no matter if you are doing Ibsen, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Mamet or Wibbels, the way to really grab an audience is when characters are stripped down to clawing for their own survival whether it be murdering their children to spite their husband worrying about a room with a view, or trying to get a bowl of soup.

When we 'act from our DNA' our basest needs are tapped. The urge to spread our genes. We want it more often. Or better. Or more partners. Or more pleasure. We lose weight so we can have more sex. Or better sex.

So much of modern marketing is dedicated to convincing you that you are completely unfuckable and must buy the product advertised to be worthy of the affections/lust of (an)other(s).

But how does this relate to business where sometimes the bow-chicka-wow-wow isn't as obvious?

It isn't just spreading your genes - but also your memes. Sex appeal for a business is about visibility. How can your ideas and products and messages spread? How can you increase your findability online?

What are three ways your products and services help others increase their sex appeal or visibility?

I Lied

I'm a cynic so I think most of us do thing for our own immediate gain. The one thing I learned from World History in college is that usually is is a war for money or god and usually when it is od it is money anyway. But some people are genuinely motivated by the need for salvation.

Or a deeper connection to their own divinity or God-liness or a more intimate relationship with the deity of their choice. You either have grace or you don't. My grandmother would call this 'Providence' - that things happened for a certain reason. That and you don't mess with Novenas.

Any Buddhists, Muslims, Hindu folks want to chime in? For atheists I was going to put smug self-satisfaction.

Power, Control and Meaning

Every worthy argument in the world is about control. Who has the power and who doesn't.

Every time you fight with your spouse, parents, boss, children... you are fighting over who has control. We look to iPhones, anti-depressants and 400 thread-count sheets to give us more control, more power of our lives.

And with our ongoing nod to Maslow, more control, more power gives us the opportunity to have more time, more money, more sex, more efficiency, more value, more visibility and ultimately - full dominion over our lives and ability to create meaning.

So if you retain nothing from this essay at least remember this question:

What are three ways your products and services help others increase the control they have over their lives?

The Three Buttons

While I was taking a break from the newsletter and blog, I'd done a lot of reconsideration of the massive hairwad that is internet marketing and doing business online.

When I was a young one, my family had gone to the symphony with my grandparents. During the intermission, my grandmother leaned over and asked me what instrument I liked most, who I wanted to be in symphony. I considered the strings, the woodwinds, the brass and the percussion and instead pointed at the conductor.

The Right to Tinker

Later on, when I was directing plays, I learned how much I enjoyed conducting things around me. My slogan was Directing isn't telling people what to do but showing them where they can go. The same attraction came out with theatre theory courses (favorites: Brecht, Artaud and Peter Brook a close third). We were studying complete worldviews on how to make art (last week we'd looked at how lifestyle = worldview). If you're an MBTI-fanatic, this would be my N side coming out - the iNtuitive preference that delights in seeing the past-present-future of a process from micro-to-macro levels (INFJ/paranoiac if you were wondering with Taurus sign and Soul Type 7).

I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination. Mostly I just change a line of PHP code, reload it and see if it blows up. If it breaks, I change it back and refresh and then research some more. If it works, I try something else. I like to tinker. I think you learn about a topic by seeing it in action - in execution - in process.

And that is why I like looking at software frameworks:

Don't Repeat Yourself

A software framework is a complete view or opinion on how to develop an application. Popular frameworks like Java or Ruby on Rails or Microsoft's .NET framework provide a complete set of rules, practices, conventions and formalities that make getting results faster. Upstart frameworks like Django, Cake and TurboGears contain similar conventions and shortcuts. The overall philosophy is:

"Most of what you want to do will probably work THIS way so let's go ahead and make it pre-defined and easier to do"

This is often called the mantra of Don't Repeat Yourself: programming is an evolution with continuous improvement. Nobody should have to write the same code twice.

You aren't starting from scratch each time. You have a set of scaffolding to work from. A framework, scaffolding, a skeleton, a blueprint, a worldview, whatever you want to call it... it is someone saying 'Here's what we usually do when we face challenge XYZ - you'll probably have similar needs.'

Kabuki and Placebos

This is similar to when a client or customer calls you and you know exactly how to solve their problems after they speak the first sentence. Sure, maybe 5% of the time you have to wait for the second sentence and you think: 'Oh wait, they'll need to zig instead of zag.' Most doctors and therapists can correctly diagnose patients within a few minutes of listening to them. The rest is just kabuki and placebos.

This principle is ignored in businesses everyday when someone thinks that what they are doing has never ever been done by any other company in the history of the world so the rules of logic or business or common sense simply don't apply. There's a reason why conventions are conventional: they usually work. And if they don't work they can help you understand what you might try next.

One Ring to Rule Them All

I've been rolling a framework around in my head for a while. A model that combined my views on internet business into one big tuna noodle casserole. I'm compelled to make it all fit into one Grand Unified Theory like they do in physics. Maybe I'm trying to force a square peg into a round hole (whole?) but I think it is a worthy mental exercise and perhaps others can learn from it. Part of this stuff is for a course and book I'm developing right now.

Finally, I stumbled across this essay by Jaisen Mathai called 'Why everyone should write a framework and never use it' where he posits that every good programmer worth their salt should write their own framework to better understand the underlying language, conventions and functionality of their own projects:

[W]riting a framework is one of the best exercises you can do as a web developer. So regardless if you plan on using the framework you write is irrelevant though I suggest you do because ironing out the fine details will make you a better programmer. "The best way to understand anything is to take it apart and reassemble it. In this case we won't be taking something apart but we'll be assembling it. First off we'll need to redefine what a framework is. From Wikipedia a framework is "a defined support structure in which another software project can be organized and developed".

This is kinda pushing me over the edge. Part of me says keep all of this private and work on it privately so nobody can steal it which is completely opposite what I'd tell a client and there's probably a wealth of insight that exposing the process of creating my framework. And most likely the fundamentals of what I'll be exploring have been collated and examined by others elsewhere. But as we've said before, there are tons of people saying the same thing you are - but the fact that it is coming from you - focused and filtered - is your competitive difference.

'Instant Global Impact' is a slogan I've batted around for several years now. It is a spin off the chapter from Blogwild titled 'Instant Global Self-Expression' and I swap in impact for self-expression since businesses are less concerned with their employees being self-expressed and more in touch with having the fastest and strongest impact possible.

So I'm going to call this the Instant Global Impact Framework for now. I'm sure once it catches on it'll be called the IGI Framework or just Wibbelism. Kinda like when a few actresses I'd directed went on to use my creativity coaching skills in their own productions saying 'we're using the Wibbels methods'. Move over Jim Jones!

Let's Start with Three Buttons

Let's jump in:

Usually we take the perspective of the business owner and start with logistics and other un-glamous stuff like forming a corporate entity or registering a tradedmark or other 'grunt-work.' Or we start the dreaded Well what's your passion? exploration (where you have to talk softly with a sibilant lisp). Then after we've gone through some more boring documentation we get to the fun part - taking the point of view of your customers. But let's start there. Start with the point of view of your customers and the structure/system they go through to become a part of your life.

Let's work backwards: A customer clicks on the BUY button on your website. They give you money, you give them a product. How did they get to that point? Customers buy when they like you, when they trust you and when they're ready (I think that comes from Michael). How did you build that trust and be first on the list when they decided they had an itch you'd be able to scratch? Somehow, they got on a mailing list or newsletter or feed subscription. Somewhere along the line, they clicked to SUBSCRIBE to some sort of vehicle where they got to know you over time. And what brought them to that subscription form or other type of opt-in? They were looking for content or expertise about a certain topic or problem. They may have clicked a button to SEARCH using their favorite search engine. It could also be seeing you on TV or hearing you on the radio or getting a referal from a friend - this is a bit more abstact then a search button but I think it still helps to express how content or search results gets people to find you and then consider joining your network or newsletter or community.

Let's take it forwards: A customer is researching a problem or passion, they SEARCH their favorite repository of information (like a search engine or social network or their own personal 'flesh/blood' network). They find compelling content that points to some sort of opt-in or contact capture or subscription form which they fill out and click SUBSCRIBE. Then you start 'dating' this prospect and gradually they get to know you and either you build trust and credibility or you fall of their radar. Then, when they need what you have they click BUY.

Ha - it is kinda like a three-act play! The marketing tactics and creme filling is what happens before and after these three different buttons get clicked.

Sure, someone might just come to your site and buy from you immediately. They don't have to go through all these steps. Or they may never buy and just lurk forever. Right now I feel like the SEARCH button is the most abstract l

These three buttons are of course a gross generalization of the overall process - someone might not actually SEARCH for you. They might enter your URL into their browser or click from an article you wrote or some other way that makes you pop up in their real or metaphorical seach results. There's a lot of caveats to throw under the bus, but it helps to chop things up into three parts from being completely unknown to a potential customer, orbiting their lives to finally being needed and being able to provide them products and services.

So that's the top-level 30,000 foot view of the framework I'm working on. Next week I'll go a bit further with what happens before your customer clicks SEARCH.

Like I said, this is intellectual property for my next book/course so I'd love to get your feedback or suggestions or parallels you see in the work of other (smarter) people. Questions, suggestions, corrections, opinions, additions? Let's hug it out...

Everything is a Lifestyle

The word lifestyle always makes me cringe.

Partially because it is coded language used in the movement to block equality rights for gay men and women by right-wing fundamentalists. Lifestyles are a choice so every time you hear someone talk about the 'gay lifestyle' part of the meme is that same-sex attraction is not natural but a chosen set of behaviors and so should not be a framework for equality (i.e. Those dirty-dirty girls just need some churchin'). Oh and coincidentally if you are for Prop 8 in California please immediately unsubscribe from this newsletter or feed.

I still maintain that people who are that obsessed with someone else's genitals have some other issues to work through with their own.

Sigh.

Now that that's out of the way I want to talk to lifestyles as a marketing concept:

Lifestyles vs Niches

Often I've flogged the concept of a niche being a group of people with a common set of urgent problems or passions (adapted from Andrea/Tina's work). And not just a group of people in the abstract but a group of people that are accessible either online or offline. I've adapted this idea to hot FedEx guys and furries in the past but I think there's a separate trend that sits alongside the concept of niche.

If a niche is a common set of problems then a lifestyle is a common set of worldviews and behaviors.

In the mass mediascape these days, everyone has an active lifestyle and we are conversely chided if we have a sedentary lifestyle. Your Splenda now has fiber for your busy lifestyle (suddenly we're programming women to be obsessed with their regularity and I'm not even including the 'yogurt as fake meal' craze).

I thought that when something had few calories, added some taste and fiber it was called a fucking vegetable.

Your oil-sucking SUV can mow down caribou in the mountains and though you only use it to drive to the Wal-Mart every Wednesday, you could go offroad - you never know - it is part of your busy lifestyle. The life coaching trend has morphed a bit into lifestyle coaching and Tim Ferris took it a bit further renaming it lifestyle design.

The way you live your life makes you part of a marketable group.

The Gawker blog network has been lauded for this with its focus on young men who are early adopters. Their blog network includes gadgets, cars, gaming, sci-fi and babes. This is hand in hand with current approaches in advertising where you are marketing less about a product and more about the identity/lifestyle that is conveyed in the product. I think lifestyles go beyond demographics because it isn't just about location or generation but a worldview. 'I'm lovin' it!' since I'm so busy making hip-hop records shoving beef patties in my maw with my buddies and everyone is still amazingly thin. Wigga please.

Lifestyles are post-Maslow.

When you're fed, safe, loved and sheltered you focus on self-actualization - creating meaning - and luxury.

Lifestyles are also an ideal future. It is not just how you see the present and your place in it but also what dreams may come. The car commercial that lets the drum kick while it says 'Start a company. Sell it. Start another one.' We all get to be moguls. Lifestyles are fantasies stretching from preparing for the End of Days to a letter to the editor that begins "I never thought this would happen to me, but..."

A women's or men's health magazine is a perfect example of a lifestyle encased in print. Men's Health magazine has information about workouts and nutrition but also information that is tangential: cars, sex and personal finance.

What is your lifestyle?

A quick way to divine your own lifestyle is to look at the consumer products and services that surround you. I subscribe to the following magazines: The Advocate, Fitness Rx and Wired. I obsessively read Reddit, Salon, Metafilter, Techmeme, HuffPo and Memeorandum. I drink BSN creatine and protein shakes and go to a Crunch gym. I have an iPhone that has podcasts from Democracy Now, The Economist, NPR and Rachel Maddow. Elements of my lifestyle are early-adopter, gomo-techie-obsessed, liberal/progressive values with a commitment to physical fitness/vanity.

A niche looks at common passions and problems. A lifestyle articulates a common worldview.

I sometimes wonder if our socialization in such a heavily-branded environment transforms us into thinking of ourselves as operating lifestyles. We live and dream in brands. We assign ourselves these mythic identities concocted by corporate conglomerates to convince to buy what they have.

Examples of Lifestyle Entrepreneurs

I've always admired Hugh Hefner as the penultimate example of creating a lifestyle brand - of being a 'lifestyle entrepreneur.' He was an awkward kid from Nebraska. He took his favorite things in the world: women, booze, sex and a certain continental style and combined them into a magazine. Of course, the Playboy brand has suffered and Hef has become a parody of himself not aging gracefully at all as his daughter fights to keep the corporate entity above water. Bodog, the gambling site, does the same thing. At the base of their brand is online gambing - oh excuse me - we call it gaming now to reduce connections with the mob. But their site promises you can have you arms around a hottie while you chug booze and cheer during a mixed martial arts contest. Or look at the 'hip-hop lifestyle' that has gradually taken the movement out of the music and made it one more off-the-shelf identity.

Another example is Martha Stewart. Martha took a focus on the details and created an entire world around it. A world of New England luxuries and chow-chow dogs shaking off the snow as everybody comes inside for wassail. The house is a spartan museum where every room is a testament to palette, texture and taste. Martha is obviously a strong personality with a strong point of view (if she was a man this never would have been a problem and she wouldn't have had to pay for Enron's sins as well as her own). Martha is deliverance through cake. Creating meaning through experience and attention to detail. It isn't just embroidering those cloth napkins (or paying your assistant to do it) but being able to talk about doing it, how you did it and how you'll do it again next Christmas.

Oprah does the same thing. Her brand is built on too much information. Where some personalities concoct impenetrable shields around their hearts, Oprah spills it every single day. When she launched her school in Africa, we saw her own pain at not feeling fulfilled as a young girl - at times I think that pain overshadowed the plight of the girls she was helping - and sometimes there was a sense of 'I shouldn't be watching this.' Another perfect example is Annie Lenox during the American Idol 'Idol Gives Back' special.

Lifestyles transcend media format.

Looking at all the above examples, I notice that they are all personality-based brands. There is an ego/character anchoring the enterprise. Will Apple survive without Steve Jobs? I once heard a description of Apple as a company built to monetize his design aesthetic.

All of these lifestyle entrepreneurs and brands are also available in multiple media formats and price points. Clothing, books, CDs, music, locations, vacations, resorts, paint swatches... all these effluvia orbiting the central personality and the core brand.

These are all thoughts and ideas orbiting the concept of lifestyle. I just wanted to get them out in print so they can ricochet through everyone else's neurons.

Facebook Ad Targeting Still Sucks

With all the JavaScript wizardry the devs at Facebook manage to shoehorn into Facebook (and support so many different configurations of browser and operating systems) it constantly amazes me that their targeted ads get such poor performance:

A Facebook advertiser who has spent thousands of dollars on campaigns targeted by age and country says that the site's new reporting tools for advertisers have exposed a serious problem: Either the targeting routines are broken, or the reporting is completely off. An ad meant for U.K. teens went mostly to the U.S. and other European countries instead.

How can you have so much information about users and not be able to target to them effectively?

Back in 2007 Nick reported:

Facebook has continuously produced less than stellar results for advertisers. With historically high CPMs and historically low click-thrus, Facebook is facing a challenge. Their new ad system has significantly reduced the CPM for those that opt for the cost-per-click (CPC) model. The only problem is that there are no clicks. While the targeting is phenomenal, Facebook users are more engaged by the content within the site rather than the advertisements. Perhaps Facebook is a little too engaging.

I just find it odd to have so much behavioral and demographic data and not being able to get ads to perform.

Become an Online Business Manager by Tina Forsyth (Book Review)

There's a few people in this world I'd trust with anything and one of them is Tina Forsyth. Eric and I have often referred to Tina and Andrea J. Lee as our Witches of Eastwick (the third was Susan Austin who appears to be still underground - hope she's okay).

I first met Tina back in my Coachamatic days when I flew out to San Jose for a weekend seminar with Chris Barrow. I knew back then she was a business bad-ass. And through the years, I've worked for and with Tina and watched in awe as they built a world-class company. Few people can say they have had an impact on an industry like she can.

Tina and Andrea are a perfect yin-yang business partnership with Andrea taking a more conceptual view of the enterprise and Tina grounding things into actionable reality. I read their stuff and always say: Why didn't I think of that?!And finally Tina got down to writing the book we've all been waiting for:

Become an Online Business Manager: Playing a Bigger Game with Your Clients and Yourself

A decade ago no one would really entertain the idea of needing or being an online business manager - or fully understanding the nuances that make online business different. But now we know that entire careers and fortunes are being made online by people over the world who have found a way to bring their products and services to thousands of people. And at the core of any successful online business is an online business manager.

Tina cooks a decade of experience into a practical approach to training to become an online business manager. She walks through how to build your skills, find clients and run the day-to-day details of a business manager.

I think the most important concept in the book is that the growth of a business is directly related to the business owner's personal development. That usually takes people a bit of time to get used to. But your business is an extension of yourself. If you work in a company, your job is an extension of yourself (and how could it not be when you spend half your waking hours there?). Your business will quickly extract your strengths and weaknesses as you succeed/fail, fly/flop or muddle through. As an online business manager you have the opportunity to witness a business owner make this realization and be a midwife for their success. And of course, your own business as a manager will instruct and inform you as well. I've seen it in myself and my colleagues - the more in touch you are with your identity and the core of what makes you you - what sets you apart - the more successful your busines will be.

If you find yourself doing work as a virtual assistant and gradually shifting into more of a partnership with your clients, then you are becoming an online business manager and need to step your game - and the game of your clients. If you are considering hiring an online business manager - be sure they've read or are reading this book - and read it yourself so you know how to shop for an online business manager.

Go check out Tina's book right now...

Recession, Depression and Self-Expression (I'm Freaked Out, Too)

If you think you can be recession-proof you're an idiot and should immediately unsubscribe from this newsletter or feed. Months ago when the 'credit crunch' began there was a flurry of teleseminars and newsletters talking about how it wouldn't affecting anything or anyone and we should all keep clapping until Tinkerbell comes back to life. Then when the commercial paper markets and credit default swap markets collapsed everyone seemed to wake up a bit more. The abundance mentality of always more, pay it off later, leverage it to the future generation has brought us a whiplash. Dark humor pervades the blogosphere with sites like brokers with hands on their faces. And to write it off as just bad vibes and buzz-kills is to be completely wreckless with your future success.

Highly recommended: National Public Radio's This American Life did a show on the financial crisis that left me feeling much more informed about what is going on: The Giant Pool of Money (transcript). There's a few parts in there that might make you dry heave. They had such a response from these two shows that they've started a free podcast specifically about educating the rest of us on the day-to-day events as they unfold: Planet Money Podcast. I also want to highly highly highly recommend you watch Elizabeth Warren's analysis of economic trends of household spending and income in last several decades. If you do business with customers in the US you need to be aware of these trends and how they are affecting families. Also useful is WaPo's analysis and if you need a laugh read about a visit to Robert Allen's 'No Money Down' seminars.

My biggest concern for bloggers is that the recession-depression-downturn is going to cause a pull-back in online advertising spending. The marketing blogs are battling this argument out right now, some saying that overall ad-spending will decrease and others countering that print and TV will decline but online ad spends will stay strong since they are easier to deploy. But problogging has always hinged on compelling writing, an enthusiastic audience and advertisers willing to pay for access to that audience. This has always been a hitch with focusing directly on the ad-based type of blog income. If click-through rates go down or spending goes down there will be a flood of inventory and no one around to buy it. Some say that an economic downturn will bring more people to blogging as they focus on their next careers and invest in themselves or simply need a way to blow off steam.

But here in Silicon Valley there has been a rash of layoffs (Dell, eBay, TicketMaster, Yahoo, AdBrite, Heavy, Glam, Zillow, Mahalo, Rev3, Seesmic, Lulu, Gawker and the list goes on) as companies tighten their (seat)belts for a lean winter of discontent. This has brought back the old 'blogging is dead' meme that seems to be on a 9 month boomerang.

Blogging isn't dead or dying - just different. When I'm doing a seminar, usually towards the end someone asks about the future of blogging and is it just a fad and I've always maintained that it will merge into greater trends. These trends include social media and consumer-generated content - stuff made by 'real people' (what we used to call 'folk art'). The money to be made may be shifting but the trends of anytime, anywhere, always-on, always-archived instant global self-expression is here to stay.

And the tenuous political situation here in the US isn't helping any either. I can't stop watching the news, can you? Each day it is 'oh look, there's a bit more on the bottom of the barrel, scrape scrape!' I feel like the world is holding it's breath to see what happens. I told Ron if they back the trucks up while he's flying back to divert to Canada and I'll try and get through the Underground Railroad.

Time to Cultivate

So if sales are down, leads are disinterested and everyone is being a Negative Nancy or Debbie Downer what do you do? Start working on the Next Thing.

Now is the time to start developing your new intellectual property. I've had some ideas buzzing in my cortex for several months now and am going to start entertaining them on my blog and here in the newsletter. I need to refresh my courses and seminars and re-align them to the current landscape and get cooking on some new book deals. Focus less on the desperation of making the sale and more on the inspiration. Go back to what inspires you. I've missed my seminars and classes and educating people on how all this techie-stuff can improve their lives and businesses. I'm entranced by this stuff. What turns you on? You only have so much control of the chaos swirling around you - how can you batten down the hatches and still lay the groundwork for something new?

The best slogan for networking I've ever heard is, 'Dig your well before you're thirsty.' Hopefully you've excavated a little bit but by building out your network and contacts now you'll be priming the pump for when things pick up again. Things will get better. But when they will get better remains to be seen.

Your turn: How are you dealing with the election waiting game, the global financial meltdown and other signs of the End of Days? Leave a comment...

Mixed metaphor

I just made a new mash-up metaphor:

Separate the meat from the chaff.

I can haz aspartame

Sweet God this Diet Snapple is NASTEEE.