Social Media for Special Events

This month's issue of Events Solutions magazine quotes me in their article "Events 2.0". My contribution centers on the use of Twitter for Special Events industry professionals:

"Twitter is a great way to spread short bits of information about your events, and with Twitter's 140-character limit, you're not pressured to come up with a great press release -- you can just spread the news quickly and concisely."

I especially think Twitter has great value for ticketed events. I've been doing some consulting work for the 2,800 seat Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC), and they are starting to make great use of Twitter.
As a case study, DPAC recently hosted British singer/songwriter Morrissey (formerly of The Smiths). The show at DPAC on March 11 was to be the eighth show of the U.S. leg of the singer's "Years of Refusal" World Tour. But he cancelled the first four due to illness, did an abbreviated set on the fifth, and cancelled the next two shows prior to the scheduled DPAC concert. DPAC had tickets left to sell, and there were thousands of fans from Asheville (under four hours away), Atlanta, South Carolina and Florida who were potentially willing to make the trip up to Durham.
The problem: fans didn't believe the Durham show would take place, either.
The solution: social media.
Beginning early on the morning of March 11, DPAC and I set out to assure out-of-towners that Morrissey would perform. We primarily utilized the platforms of Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and Flickr, along with Morrissey's fan forums. Here are some sample tweets:

7:35 AM - Morrissey tickets just $25. And yes he is going on tonight....

9:32 AM - Check out photos I just took of Morrissey crew setting up at DPAC for tonight's show... http://www.flickr.com/photos/dpaclive/sets/72157615110905510/

2:05 PM - Heard the sound check...Morrissey goes on around 8:30 tonight. Tickets still available at the door.

The goal was to use Social Media to assure fans that the show would go on, and that there were tickets still available. We also wanted to create a buzz about the show on the Net. It worked.
I recently presented a one-hour Keynote Speech on Internet Marketing for the Greater Triangle NC Chapter of the International Special Events Society. I'm available to speak for groups, organizations, and private companies about using Social Media. Just check out my SEO Speaker page and give me a call.

How to Attract Top Affiliates

I don't have a ton of experience with affiliate marketing. When I launched the Funny Employee Awards affiliate program earlier this year, I wasn't sure what to expect. Luckily, I've received some excellent advice from Jeremy Schoemaker:

"For affiliates its pretty simple… they either make money or they don’t. If I were you I would blow it out of the water by offering a MUCH higher payout. I think its as important for you to get brand recognition as it is to get sales $$$ at this time.

Here is the scoop when it comes to affiliates. They are SO adverse to change but once they try it they will probably keep going. So your goal is just getting them to try it. Maybe offer a 100% payout for their first month? Sure you break even for their first month but the brand recognition and buzz might be worth it.""

Offering 100% payout for the first month is such a great idea, and I never would have thought of it. It's definitely something I'm going to try for my next project.
In the meantime, if you have some great ideas for promoting my eBook "Funny Employee Awards," join my affiliate program and drop me an email. I can offer a much higher payout listed on the site if you can deliver the traffic.

Million Dollar eBook Marketing Plan

Lots of people have made a million dollars and then told you how they did it. But how many people tell you how they're going to make a million dollars and then show you? That's what I will to attempt to do.
My product will be an eBook that is tentatively scheduled to go on sale October 1, 2008. I don't know if you can make a million dollars selling an eBook, but I believe in aiming high. For the purposes of this experiment, we will also include any income from speaking fees, consulting fees, or other ancillary income that results from the sale and promotion of the eBook.
Let's explore some potential avenues for marketing the eBook:

Television Advertising and Promotion

I'm not an expert on infomercials or TV spots, so I'm not likely to go that route initially. If were going to run commercials, though, I would definitely explore the options offered through Spotrunner and Google TV Ads. I will, however, be pursuing guest appearances on TV talk shows, either directly or through a publicist.

Radio Advertising and Promotion

Radio advertising is not in my current plans, but radio promotion will be one of the key components of my marketing plan. I have retained the services of the top morning radio show promoter in the country. In the past, I have gone the do-it-yourself route. It worked well, but I just don't have the time to handle of the scheduling and logistics myself. The cost for the radio promotion will be around $3,000.

Print Advertising

I'm considering running display ads in industry-targeted magazines, but there are no plans for newspaper ads at this point. The display ads under consideration run $1,000-2,000 for 1/4 page slots, in addition to the design costs for the ads.

Press Releases

I do plan to send press releases through either PRNewswire or Business Wire. My goal with press releases is to land articles in newspapers and magazines. A release sent over the "features wire" with PRNewswire costs $680 plus a $200 membership fee.

Search Engine Optimization

What kind of search engine optimization trainer would I be if I didn't practice what I preach? I've done my keyword research, built a content rich site, and am pursuing inbound links and reputable directory listings. I have or will buy directory listings at Yahoo! ($299), Business.com ($199), and Best of the Web ($79). DMOZ remains elusive. A blog is under consideration.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

I'm definitely going to pursue PPC advertising through Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing. My early tests haven't shown great results for my  niche, but I'll keep making refinements to hopefully hit on the winning formula. If I can produce a positive ROI, I'll spend an unlimited amount.

Viral Internet Marketing

I've got plans to write and produce some funny videos that should have the potential to spread around the Net. I'm building up my social networks and using bookmarking tools like Del.icio.us. I will leverage my networks of friends and colleagues to help spread the word.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is pretty new to me, but I'm learning as much as I can. The idea behind affiliate marketing is to have others promote and sell your eBook for a percentage of the revenue. I like the idea a lot, and would appreciate any advice.

Email Marketing

Over the years I've amassed a pretty large email list through my comedy performances and professional contacts. I'm currently using Constant Contact, and will send at least one good email to everyone. I don't plan to acquire any email lists, but I haven't ruled it out.

Direct Mail

Yep, I'll be using good old, fashioned direct mail. I'm particularly a big fan of postcard mailers, and use PrintingForLess for all my printing needs. I've acquired mailing lists for potential targets and am considering how large of a mailing to send. I may do a small test mailing of 250-500 contacts, with the option of quickly sending out a larger mailing if the test is successful.

International Marketing

Why stop in the U.S.? I may use elance.com to help find people who can promote the eBook overseas. In particular, I'll be seeking someone to help with SEO and viral marketing in the United Kingdom.

Publicist

If you know a good publicist, I will definitely consider hiring them.

Other...

This eBook marketing plan is still under development, so what am I forgetting?

Trust Guard Review - Is It Worth the Money?

"In the two weeks following installing the Trust Guard seals on my site, sales increased 116% over the prior two week period! Clearly, I've been losing sales for months by not having a third-party site verification like Trust Guard. On the Internet, Trust is everything. Thank you Trust Guard! I'm glad I found you." - Larry Weaver, FunAwards.com

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This bold testimonial appears on the website of Trust Guard, a site that sells third-part website verification seals. As the author of the quote, I can tell you that it is 100% true.

I installed the seals on Sunday, April 6, 2008. Comparing a 30-day period before and after installing the seals, sales were up 72.5%.
The reason is simple - people need to feel confident making a transaction on your website. No matter how professional your site looks, people will always (rightfully so) be leery of entering their credit card information.
With Trust Guard, customers can click on the seals to instantly verify your site's credentials without leaving your site, giving them confidence to complete their purchase.

Before discovering Trust Guard, I had investigated BBB, HackerSafe, Truste and Verisign. These verifications can easily cost you $1,000+ each. Trust Guard gives you multiple types of website verification for a much lower price. I chose the multi-seal package for the yearly rate or $397. It paid for itself very quickly.

The bottom line is this: If you need an economical way to create trust on your website, you can't go wrong with Trust Guard.

Larry Weaver - Top 10 Search Results for "Larry Weaver"

The search engines do a great job of ranking websites. But sometimes they need a little help. These are the top 10 results I'd like to see for "larry weaver"

1. Larry Weaver official website
2. Larry Weaver Entertainment official website
3. Larry Weaver blog feed on Feedburner
4. Larry Weaver on LinkedIn
5. Larry Weaver SEO Speaker
6. Larry Weaver on Facebook
7. Larry Weaver on MySpace
8. Larry Weaver on YouTube
9. Larry Weaver bookmarks on del.icio.us
10. Larry Weaver on StumbleUpon

And maybe throw in the Larry Weaver page on Comedy Central to round out the Top 11. Because in my search engine, the rankings all go to 11.

Local Search: Optimizing Your Page Titles

I taught two lively SEO Training Classes in Atlanta, GA this week for the Association of Video Professionals. One of the more interesting revelations from the student case studies was that while all of the video service companies were trying to attract clients from their local area, few understood the importance of including their City and State in their page titles.
I may soon write a new case study that looks just at Search Engine Marketing for Video Professionals. For now, I'm going to repost an article from last year that discusses effective page titles for local search. While this case study is about landscaping, you can easily translate it to video services, neighborhood florists, or any business using their website to attract local customers.
Local Search Case Study: Landscaping Marketing
It has come to my attention that search engine optimization has not exactly caught on fire in the landscaping world. I know this because I’ve been searching for a local residential landscaper for my home in North Carolina. My search frustrations stem from landscaper’s lack of understanding local search.

Residential landscaping is local or regional by nature. A landscaper in Raleigh, NC may find parts of Durham (15-20 minutes away) out of their area. It is imperative for landscapers to include your service areas in the text of your web sites. Not just for SEO purposes, but to save you from having to follow up on out-of-area inquiries that will never convert to sales. Remember, sometimes you want to exclude potential customers.

Local search rule #1 is to include your service area in your page title. SEO experts agree that the title is the most important factor in determining you search engine ranking. Consider the following example page title:
AAA Landscapes – Homepage
Based on this title alone, this page isn’t likely to rank well for anything other than the company name – AAA Landscapes. If this page was lucky enough to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for my search on “residential landscaping in durham”, it is still missing three key elements: service area, keywords, and compelling marketing language. Now consider this revision:
AAA Landscapes – Award-winning Durham, NC Residential Landscaping since 1981

Look at what a difference a few words make:

• Service Area: By looking at the title, I can see this company is located in my area, Durham, NC (and not Durham, England – a very prominent other “Durham” in search results.)
• Keywords: Now our keywords “residential landscaping” and “durham” are right in the title. This company now has a better chance at ranking higher in the search engine results pages for their target customer base.
• Marketing Language: We can quickly see that this company has won some awards and has been in business for 25 years. Sounds like a reputable company.

Landscapers of the World, you have some work to do:

1. Get a web site (if you don’t already have one).
2. Perform keyword research to uncover the most popular search terms for your business.
3. Include those keywords – along with your service area – in your page titles and content.
4. Include clear contact information on every single page of your web site.
5. Consider pay-per-click advertising on Google, Yahoo! or MSN.

That should keep you busy for now. Contact me if I can be of service…

The Actual Monetary Value of Internet Video Fame: A Case Study

On Friday, April 20 I awoke to find two of my comedy shorts on the front page of MySpace. To put things into perspective, MySpace is consistently one of the Top 5 most visited web sites in the World. They have 4 featured videos on the home page. And there I was in two of them. If we were to believe mainstream media’s coverage of “Internet fame”, then by all accounts I should be sipping Mojitos at the Casa Del Mar with Brent Weinstein from United Talent Agency. But instead of discussing my next film project, I’m writing this blog to reveal the real stats behind Internet video fame.

Key Internet Video Benchmarks
Summary from Day 1:87,032 - video views
2,474 - visits to MySpace page after viewing video (2.8%)
110 - new MySpace friends (0.1%)
0 – revenue*

After Day 1, MySpace no longer displayed the two videos on the home page. However, one of the videos remained in homepage rotation for 7 days, and both remained “featured” videos on the main MySpace video tab for 7 days.

Full 7 day effect:
165,793 – video views
4,803 - visits to MySpace page after viewing video (2.9%)
198 - new MySpace friends (0.1%)
0 – revenue*

On Day 8 with no promotion from MySpace, video views plummeted 721%.

*A note on the $0 revenue: To be fair, I wasn’t selling anything. But let’s suppose I was offering a DVD of my best comedy shorts. With less than 3% of people clicking through to my page, and only .1% of people being interested enough to add me as a friend, how much could I have possibly made? The answer is likely not very much.

What is the Value of Internet Video Fame?
What I’m trying to determine is the actual monetary value of Internet video fame. Perhaps this isn’t a good case study. Maybe people hated the videos, and hated what they saw when they clicked through to the page. (And if you read the hilarious video comments, it’s certain that a very vocal percentage fits that description).

Using web analytics, “Internet Video Fame” can be measured, tested, and quantified. In this case study, the fame brought lots of eyeballs, but no money. So was it a waste? Or will the fame indirectly lead to other business opportunities down the road? I’ll definitely keep you posted.

What is the Value of a Reality TV Show Appearance?
Be sure to bookmark this blog and check back. I’ll soon have actual statistical data on the value of Reality TV show appearances for bands. Using web analytics, I’ll show you exactly how many website visits you can expect from your 15 minutes of fame, and how many CDs you can expect to sell. You won’t want to miss it!

How to Submit your XML Site Map to Google, Yahoo & MSN

Submitting Your XML Site Map

Today we conclude our series on How to Build an XML sitemap for Google, Yahoo, and MSN. After creating your XML sitemap using a free online site map builder or site map software, you’ll want to upload it to your web server. For most users, this will mean simply adding the file “sitemap.xml” to the root directory of your web site. The result should be viewable in your browser.

For the final step, you’ll want to submit your sitemap to the search engines:

Google Webmaster Tools
First, you’ll need a Google Account to sign in (if you don’t already have one). Then you’ll need to prove ownership of any sites that you’d like to add sitemaps to. You can do this by uploading meta tags or a unique file to your site that they will provide. Once you are verified as the site owner, you can simply submit the URL of your XML sitemap. In addition to submitting your sitemap, this site provides a host of information including any crawl errors, pages with the highest PageRank, the top search queries for your site, and so much more.
http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/

Yahoo! Site Explorer
As with Google Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to authenticate yourself as owner of any website you wish to manage. Yahoo will provide you with a file to upload to your web server. Once authenticated you can upload your XML sitemap.
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

MSN - Bing Webmaster Center
Just like the others, you’ll need to authenticate yourself as owner of any website you wish to manage with your MSN/Bing/Live login. Bing will provide you with a file to upload to your web server. Once authenticated you can upload your XML sitemap.
http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Site Map Software: CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper

CoffeeCup Google Sitemapper
Summary: Outstanding Site Map Software for any sized site

If you have a large web site (more than 500 pages), a site with dynamic content, or multiple websites to manage, you may just find Coffeecup’s Google Sitemapper the best $29 you can spend. I’ve been a fan of their software for years, and this application does not disappoint.

Sitemapper is a desktop application, so you don’t have to worry about installing it on your web server. You simply enter your web site URL and let the tool crawl your site. But there are many great advanced features like file types to include or exclude (.pdf, .mp3, etc.), pages or folders to ignore, queries to ignore (for dynamic content) and so much more. Plus you can save your profiles, schedule the software to run periodically, and automatically FTP the files to your web server. It works like a charm.

Bottom line: Highly recommended and well worth the cost
http://www.coffeecup.com/google-sitemapper/

Free Online Site Map Builder: XML-Sitemaps.com Review

XML-sitemaps.com Review
Summary: Great free online site map builder for small sites

If you have a small website (less than 500 pages), this free online site map builder should work great for you. The web site allows you to:

• Create an XML sitemap to submit to Google, Yahoo and MSN to help them crawl your website better.
• Generate an HTML site map to allow human visitors to easily navigate on your website.

Simply enter your web site URL from the homepage, complete the optional parameters, and press the “start” button. The homepage also includes helpful definitions for all of the optional parameters. I'm not sure how they could make this any easier.

After crawling your site, you’ll see the generated sitemap details page, including number of pages and broken links list. You'll also be given links to the XML file content and the HTML sitemap.

Bottom Line: simple, effective, and easy-to-use.
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

How to Build an XML Sitemap for Google, Yahoo, and MSN

The three largest search engines, Google, Yahoo, and MSN, now support a unified method of submitting web pages to their crawlers through XML sitemaps. If you’ve found that the search engines aren’t indexing all of your web pages, this new protocol may help. The new Sitemaps.org site sums it up nicely, “Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.”

There are three basic steps in the process:

1. Create an XML sitemap
2. Upload the sitemap to your web site
3. Submit the sitemap to the search engines

In this multi-post series, we'll explore each of these steps in full detail. I'll teach you How to Build an XML sitemap using a free online site map builder or downloadable site map software. I'll tell you exactly where to put the site map on your web server. Finally, I'll walk you step-by-step through submitting your XML site map to Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

It's absolutely critical that you understand and implement this important new development in search engine optimization. Be sure to refer back to this post for updates. As I post these how-to articles, I'll edit this post with links to each individual step.