I started toying around with social media early back in 2005. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was just having fun throwing aimless punches blindly in the dark, in misguided hopes of hitting the jackpot.

Stupid me, it never happened. I lacked direction and had no system in place.

But I persisted, and learned from my many mistakes. Eventually, one thing led to another and I ended up working with MindValley. Not to mention, along the way, I also got invited to new media related conferences, including ones co-organized by Harvard University.

Long story short, I gained a good amount of experience and insights into the world of social media. And now, yours truly, the Social Media DJ, is about to reveal to you a few of his key learnings, so please… pay close attention.

What I’ve Learned from 4 YEARS of Stupid Painful Screw Ups

1. Base Your Efforts on the Triple B Formula

Social media marketing is mainly a long term affair. It won’t bring you sales overnight like PPC-driven affiliate marketing for example (although there are some exceptions). It takes time and persistence. Hence, the need for passion.

Burn, baby burn.

Passion is your fuel, your sense of direction, and ultimately your vision. Plus, it will help you determine how you’re going to use social media, better shape your marketing message, and pick the relevant allies to network with who share similar passions.

More importantly, when you’re passionate and genuine, it shows in your communication with others. You’re likeable. You’re fun, and that my friend helps your message spread further and makes it more well-received.

That’s precisely one of the critical reasons why deeply passionate guys like Gary Vayner Chuck do well with social media.

Keep it real. Keep it human.

Now, if you don’t know what your passion is yet and need to know, that’s ok. My friend, Chris Attwood explains how you can discover it and start living it in his NY Times best-seller, The Passion Test. Check it out if you want to.

Alrighty then, next.

2. Don’t Sprawl the Mall

Social media is a broad game. You’ve got Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Facebook Profiles, Facebook Groups, Facebook Fan Pages, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Ning, Digg, LinkedIn and the list goes on.

All have their weaknesses and strengths. Which will you pick?

See, you won’t know accurately until you clearly specify your intended business goals. Otherwise, it’s going to be difficult to select the appropriate social media channels for your unique needs and measure the ROI of your efforts.

Here’s what you can you use social media in business for:

1. branding
2. community building
3. attracting new prospects
4. networking with potential JV partners
5. generating buzz and unleashing the viral monster
6. involving your customers in the product creation process
7. listening in on current conversations about your offerings to gain valuable feedback
8. boosting relationships with your customers to increase retention and life-time value

Selecting from the above what you desire in a prioritized fashion will determine which social media channels you should pick, focus on more, and integrate together.

Moving on.

3. Prove. Improve.

Try not to reinvent the wheel. Go for proven strategies, and once you’ve implemented them successfully, improve upon them.

Hence, prove, and then improve.

The following are three simple examples of proven social media marketing strategies.

STRATEGY #1 – Use Blogs to Increase Interaction

Old news. Nothing revolutionary here. Blogs are lovely flexible publishing platforms that create interaction. For more on using them effectively, read this:

• Positioning, “Social Polarity” and Vibrant Blog Communities
• 7 Ways to Increase Your Blog Comments
• Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog

STRATEGY #2 – Use YouTube to Attract Traffic

Being one of the top 5 most visited websites on the planet, YouTube is a serious source of traffic, so if you’re not marketing yourself there, you’re missing out on significant eyeballs. To use YouTube in cool profitable ways, read this:

• How I Made A Dollar From Everyone Who Watched My YouTube Video

STRATEGY #3 – Use Facebook to Build a Community

There are countless ways Facebook can be used for effective marketing, if you do it right. Here’s one that’s bound to spark some creative ideas in your head:

• Facebook Marketing: How Smart Restaurants and Bars are Using “Birthday Marketing” on Facebook

Okay, so now that I’ve quickly demonstrated three strategies, let’s go to the fourth step.

4. Integration – The “Popeye Spinach” Effect

Aha, now here comes the fun part. This is where many experts have short-comings, because they’re too focused on a few social media websites and miss the big picture.

Thing is, the three aforementioned strategies are good. In fact, for many experts or so-called experts, they’re “good enough.”

Not for me.

Yours truly, the Social Media DJ, doesn’t want to stop there and doesn’t want you to either. Throw in some “Popeye Spinach” and watch the magic unraveling before your eyes.

Integrate the three individual tactics strategically. There are obviously a number of ways to do that. Here’s a simple one you can use if you’re an internet marketer with an email list.

1. publish a blog post that includes:

• some useful text-based content
• your own optimized YouTube video
• your Facebook profile badge

2. blast the blog post to your list 3. sit back and enjoy!

Your blog post should look something like this. The example below is from a MindValley-owned website with Burt Goldman aka The American Monk. It leverages a lot of integrated social media marketing.

Here are the benefits of integration and the “Popeye Spinach” Effect.

1. You interact with your email list via the comments in your blog post.

2. You instantly create thousands of views and momentum for your optimized YouTube video. This pushes the video higher in rankings, meaning it will continue to attract many more views for months, if not, years to come, which nicely translates into more targeted visitors to your website via your YouTube links.

3. Converting more of your list subscribers into Facebook friends, so you can better interact with them and have a closer relationship.

It all works. Here’s proof. Have a look at the number of blog comments (42), YouTube video views (22,575), and Facebook friends (1,294) in the screenshots below:

Are you beginning to see the power of integrated social media marketing? The “Popeye Spinach” Effect is yours for exploitation. Use it, my friend. Use it!

5. ROI. Tweak, Tweak. ROI.

Your ROI is a critical important number. It doesn’t really matter if you have 5,000 “friends” on your Facebook profile, unless you can measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts. How do those true friends or so-called friends impact your business?

Come up with your suitable standards. Measure. Tweak to improve, and then measure again. That way, you won’t be aimless.

Now go, and have some fun.

Aim for maximum impact through the strategic integration of your social media marketing efforts. Are we clear, my dear friends? If not, drop your questions, and the Social Media DJ will answer them.

If you enjoyed dancing to my beats, I urge you to stick around. You’ve only just seen the tip of the iceberg. And for those of you on Twitter, the Social Media DJ has just joined the party there. Add me @passionomics for more profitable meat.

See you at the Land of Tweets.

I started toying around with social media early back in 2005. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was just having fun throwing aimless punches blindly in the dark, in misguided hopes of hitting the jackpot.

Stupid me, it never happened. I lacked direction and had no system in place.

But I persisted, and learned from my many mistakes. Eventually, one thing led to another and I ended up working with MindValley. Not to mention, along the way, I also got invited to new media related conferences, including ones co-organized by Harvard University.

Long story short, I gained a good amount of experience and insights into the world of social media. And now, yours truly, the Social Media DJ, is about to reveal to you a few of his key learnings, so please… pay close attention.

What I’ve Learned from 4 YEARS of Stupid Painful Screw Ups

1. Base Your Efforts on the Triple B Formula

Social media marketing is mainly a long term affair. It won’t bring you sales overnight like PPC-driven affiliate marketing for example (although there are some exceptions). It takes time and persistence. Hence, the need for passion.

Burn, baby burn.

Passion is your fuel, your sense of direction, and ultimately your vision. Plus, it will help you determine how you’re going to use social media, better shape your marketing message, and pick the relevant allies to network with who share similar passions.

More importantly, when you’re passionate and genuine, it shows in your communication with others. You’re likeable. You’re fun, and that my friend helps your message spread further and makes it more well-received.

That’s precisely one of the critical reasons why deeply passionate guys like Gary Vayner Chuck do well with social media.

Keep it real. Keep it human.

Now, if you don’t know what your passion is yet and need to know, that’s ok. My friend, Chris Attwood explains how you can discover it and start living it in his NY Times best-seller, The Passion Test. Check it out if you want to.

Alrighty then, next.

2. Don’t Sprawl the Mall

Social media is a broad game. You’ve got Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Facebook Profiles, Facebook Groups, Facebook Fan Pages, StumbleUpon, MySpace, Ning, Digg, LinkedIn and the list goes on.

All have their weaknesses and strengths. Which will you pick?

See, you won’t know accurately until you clearly specify your intended business goals. Otherwise, it’s going to be difficult to select the appropriate social media channels for your unique needs and measure the ROI of your efforts.

Here’s what you can you use social media in business for:

1. branding
2. community building
3. attracting new prospects
4. networking with potential JV partners
5. generating buzz and unleashing the viral monster
6. involving your customers in the product creation process
7. listening in on current conversations about your offerings to gain valuable feedback
8. boosting relationships with your customers to increase retention and life-time value

Selecting from the above what you desire in a prioritized fashion will determine which social media channels you should pick, focus on more, and integrate together.

Moving on.

3. Prove. Improve.

Try not to reinvent the wheel. Go for proven strategies, and once you’ve implemented them successfully, improve upon them.

Hence, prove, and then improve.

The following are three simple examples of proven social media marketing strategies.

STRATEGY #1 – Use Blogs to Increase Interaction

Old news. Nothing revolutionary here. Blogs are lovely flexible publishing platforms that create interaction. For more on using them effectively, read this:

• Positioning, “Social Polarity” and Vibrant Blog Communities
• 7 Ways to Increase Your Blog Comments
• Blog Marketing: Monetize The Comments On Your Blog

STRATEGY #2 – Use YouTube to Attract Traffic

Being one of the top 5 most visited websites on the planet, YouTube is a serious source of traffic, so if you’re not marketing yourself there, you’re missing out on significant eyeballs. To use YouTube in cool profitable ways, read this:

• How I Made A Dollar From Everyone Who Watched My YouTube Video

STRATEGY #3 – Use Facebook to Build a Community

There are countless ways Facebook can be used for effective marketing, if you do it right. Here’s one that’s bound to spark some creative ideas in your head:

• Facebook Marketing: How Smart Restaurants and Bars are Using “Birthday Marketing” on Facebook

Okay, so now that I’ve quickly demonstrated three strategies, let’s go to the fourth step.

4. Integration – The “Popeye Spinach” Effect

Aha, now here comes the fun part. This is where many experts have short-comings, because they’re too focused on a few social media websites and miss the big picture.

Thing is, the three aforementioned strategies are good. In fact, for many experts or so-called experts, they’re “good enough.”

Not for me.

Yours truly, the Social Media DJ, doesn’t want to stop there and doesn’t want you to either. Throw in some “Popeye Spinach” and watch the magic unraveling before your eyes.

Integrate the three individual tactics strategically. There are obviously a number of ways to do that. Here’s a simple one you can use if you’re an internet marketer with an email list.

1. publish a blog post that includes:

• some useful text-based content
• your own optimized YouTube video
• your Facebook profile badge

2. blast the blog post to your list 3. sit back and enjoy!

Your blog post should look something like this. The example below is from a MindValley-owned website with Burt Goldman aka The American Monk. It leverages a lot of integrated social media marketing.

Here are the benefits of integration and the “Popeye Spinach” Effect.

1. You interact with your email list via the comments in your blog post.

2. You instantly create thousands of views and momentum for your optimized YouTube video. This pushes the video higher in rankings, meaning it will continue to attract many more views for months, if not, years to come, which nicely translates into more targeted visitors to your website via your YouTube links.

3. Converting more of your list subscribers into Facebook friends, so you can better interact with them and have a closer relationship.

It all works. Here’s proof. Have a look at the number of blog comments (42), YouTube video views (22,575), and Facebook friends (1,294) in the screenshots below:

Are you beginning to see the power of integrated social media marketing? The “Popeye Spinach” Effect is yours for exploitation. Use it, my friend. Use it!

5. ROI. Tweak, Tweak. ROI.

Your ROI is a critical important number. It doesn’t really matter if you have 5,000 “friends” on your Facebook profile, unless you can measure the ROI of your social media marketing efforts. How do those true friends or so-called friends impact your business?

Come up with your suitable standards. Measure. Tweak to improve, and then measure again. That way, you won’t be aimless.

Now go, and have some fun.

Aim for maximum impact through the strategic integration of your social media marketing efforts. Are we clear, my dear friends? If not, drop your questions, and the Social Media DJ will answer them.

If you enjoyed dancing to my beats, I urge you to stick around. You’ve only just seen the tip of the iceberg. And for those of you on Twitter, the Social Media DJ has just joined the party there. Add me @passionomics for more profitable meat.

See you at the Land of Tweets.

I’m guessing he’s probably the ONLY 81 year old monk with more than 1,000 true friends on the social network, which brings me to my story.

Owen Thomas, a blogger at Valleywag (the Silicon Valley version of Perez Hilton), a tech gossip blog, published an amusing post about The American Monk which cracked us up over here at MindValley Labs.

He did this after I quickly pitched him – and other tech bloggers – our unique Facebook story. We’ll take his post as a compliment. You can read it here.

The funny thing is (besides all the exaggerations of course), is that they’re implying Burt Goldman may not exist. After all, this is what you’d expect from an amusing tabloid-like blog. Well, I’ve got news for Valleywag. He’s real, and here’s a video of him celebrating his 81st birthday.

All in all, Owen’s post was a good read with amusing comments. Do check out Valleywag if you’d like to keep up with tech gossip and be entertained. It’s fun.

PS – Thanks for the exposure Owen. We appreciate it. Already, just from your post, we have people approaching us for advice on social media marketing.

Well, we certainly didn’t expect it, and that just goes to show the importance of split testing even the smallest tweaks.

Here is what we did.

One of our biggest websites is www.SilvaLifeSystem.com and below is how the top banner of the website looked BEFORE implementing the tweak.

This is it AFTER the tweak.

Spot the difference?

Adding the “McAfee Secure” seal boosted sales by an average of 15%.

The seal and the information it leads to when clicked seem to make a group of suspicious prospects more comfortable at making a purchase online.

Considering the positive impact it had, it’s clearly obvious that our $2,000 investment for the seal was very worthy.

If you’re making big revenues with your online business, a 15% boost in sales, or even just a small 5% boost will easily cover your costs and you can enjoy the ROI for months to come.

I do believe that boosts in conversion rates will vary depending on your target market though.

To certify your online business, all you need to do is make an application at the McAfee Secure site:

McAfee Secure web sites are certified as providing the highest level of protection for their shoppers.

Are you going to give it a try? What are you doing now to boost the confidence of those who are suspicious and still uncomfortable with buying from you?

Please share your insights with us.

1. find your prospect’s dominant emotion and
2. incorporate it into your marketing.

You just need one main powerful ingredient to make it work well – testimonials.

That’s right.

Testimonials sell. The more you have, the better. Plus, they do boost conversion rates on websites.

So, we thought, what the heck, let’s literally put some testimonials in our emails and see how that goes.

Building Your Email from Testimonials

To give you a demonstration on how to do this, here’s a quick and simple example.

The following are testimonials from one of our major websites, SilvaLifeSystem.com

First Testimonial

“I’ve used the Silva Method for many years. It has helped me overcome my own illnesses. I urge you to attend Mr. Silva’s training sessions that are presented around the world.”

~ Dr. Wayne Dwyer, motivational speaker, author, and popular self-improvement guru from best-selling book Real Magic (Harper Mass Market Paperbacks, 1993)

Second Testimonial

“One of the earliest workshops I took was the Silva Mind Control Course… The most important technique I learned in that course was the basic technique of creative visualization… Our rational mind is like a computer… The intuitive mind, on the other hand, seems to give access to an infinite supply of information. It appears to be able to tap into a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom…”

~ Shakti Gawain, author of numerous books, including Creative Visualization (Bantam Books, 1983) from Living in the Light (Bantam Books, 1993)

Third Testimonial

I have been investigating and researching everything in the self-help and metaphysical field for the last 20 years….I have learned many techniques to help people, and the best of all is The Jose Silva UltraMind ESP System. I cannot imagine anyone not wanting to learn Jose Silva’s System once they understand how valuable these techniques are.

~ Ellen Roper, certified hypnotherapist.

Great, so now we have a few lovely testimonials. Here’s how we can include them strategically in a captivating email.

Remember, this is just a simple example.

Hi {FIRSTNAME},

The Silva Method community can be a very talkative one – I get lots of email every day from people asking questions and telling stories.

I wanted to share a few to show you what others are saying and experiencing. If Jose Silva was still alive, he would have been pleased to hear all the positive feedback. After all, he’s done something special.

{LINK}

Read these stories now and then I’ll tell you what Jose Silva did:

*************************************

Testimonial 1

*************************************

Testimonial 2

*************************************

Okay, so we’ve seen 2 examples of people across the country taking the 1st step to start – and getting results FAST.

All it took was an expert teacher and a little effort.

When you go after something with the right mind set, coincidences happen and the universe works FOR you. It’s almost like the universe WANTS you to succeed… so pick some good goals

So what did Jose do you ask?

Jose Silva spent 50 years developing The Silva Method, by far one of the most powerful personal development programs ever invented.

{LINK}

You owe it to yourself to give it a try and take advantage of the 30% discount being offered ONLY in the next 5 days.

Grab it fast here:

{LINK}

And it would be great if you sent me your reaction after trying it.

It’s really making waves…

Regards, Sender’s Name

P.S.: Here’s another story from a satisfied spirit

*************************************

Testimonial 3

*************************************

If you’re ever going to try the Silva Method you should right now since that discount is still available

You can get going here (I recommend it):

{LINK}

And that’s basically it. That’s how you strategically place testimonials in an email. Go ahead and use the structure of the above email for your own email marketing efforts.

We’ve had great success with this strategy.

A Few Closing Words

Now of course, the above isn’t meant to be a substitute for other important things a good email needs to have such as a captivating subject line. It’s meant to be a solid complimentary tactic you can use once in a while to boost your email marketing performance.

In this interview Rand generously provides great tips and ideas that we have found beneficial. Moreover, they clarify a number of points too, so be sure to check it out.

>> Rand Fishkin Interview

During the interview, Rand mentioned a highly critical point, and that is the immense importance of link building and how it is the biggest concern for people who are striving for better rankings.

This is precisely why we developed Traffic Marks. It makes the process of link building much easier. So, head over now and sign up for Traffic Marks while it’s still FREE!

If you’ve ALREADY signed up, don’t miss out on the powerful Deep Search feature. Head over to this page here to grab it and begin dominating Google.

Thing is, once you’ve mercilessly found the relevant authority sites for killer SEO purposes, you then need to formulate a strategy to get links from them.

So, how do you do that?

Here’s an excellent blog post that helps show you how.

7 Steps to Getting Published on Authority Sites

The outlined steps are clearly explained so spend time reading them. You’ll find them useful.

Previously, doing this was quite a pain, and over here at MindValleyLabs we’ve been striving hard to solve this problem.

Typically, you need to analyze the backlinks to each of the top search results one by one. It can be a time consuming process which can also possibly result in inaccuracies.

Our new tool Traffic Marks mercilessly eliminates those problems for good. Best of all, it’s completely FREE – for now.

Find Authority Site After Authority Site and Get Powerful Incoming Backlinks to Build Your Own Website Authority

Studies show that just one link from these sites is more secure in getting first page position than 100 different incoming backlinks from unknown websites!

Traffic Marks hones in and pinpoints these authority sites so you know exactly where to focus your link building efforts. It is the quickest, easiest way to find the best authority sites to get links from.

Ultimate Ease of Use

Using the tool is easy, here’s the simple 3-step process:

Step 1 » Identify the keyword you want to rank on Google for.

Step 2 » Use Traffic Marks to find out what backlinks the top 10 search results in Google have in common.

Step 3 » Identify the key authority sites for your chosen keyword phrase. Using this information, formulate a strategy to obtain links from them and effortlessly cruise to the front page of Google.

Get it here for FREE while it still is.

Your Feedback Is Super Welcome

Please let us know in the comments section or in emails what your experience with using Traffic Marks has been like after you’ve given it a very worthy shot. Already, it’s pretty good I’d say, but there’s always room for improvement. Help us so we can help you by giving you a constantly-improved tool.

Get it here for FREE while it still is.

Social media is turning marketing and public relations upside down. The rules of the game are changing and shifting, and amidst all of this wonderful, innovation-driven chaos, many get into social media without keeping a focus on the “social” in social media.

How many times have you gotten onboard a social media website, went on an “adding friends” wild spree, starting sending links to these new so-called friends and wished for the best? I don’t know about you but I’ve had several attempts with different social media sites. Many failed, and some succeeded.

Don’t Just Add, Interact

Don’t succumb to laziness and evil shortcut-ish temptations. Social media is a long-term effort which requires patience.

Come up with goals that can easily be broken down into small, very achievable steps. For example, everyday, genuinely make 3 or 5 acquaintances.

Adding many “friends” alone and immediately sending content to them in hopes of getting them to vote for it is not the right approach.

1. Add a few people at a time – preferably like-minded people and power users.
2. Interact with them, and make it a daily goal.
3. Meanwhile, keep in touch with those you’ve already added.
4. Maintain your focus on power users and
5. Turn acquaintances into friends.

Using a spreadsheet will be helpful to keep track of who are new/old acquaintances and friends.

Keep It Human

I graduated university with a major in Knowledge Management and before joining MindValley, that is pretty much what I used to focus on during my previous professional working life.

From my experience, when Knowledge Management initiatives fail, they mostly do because of too much focus on a techno-centric view.

There is a related and important lesson here.

Social media sites provide innovative technologies which merely act as enablers for communication and social interaction, so ultimately it’s not really about the technology. I repeat, communication technologies are merely enablers. They don’t and won’t replace common patterns of human psychology which exist in the real world and which are also behind successful and healthy social media efforts. Don’t fall for a techno-centric view.

Keep it human.