If you’ve been following this blog for a while you know that for the past few years I’ve been running a conference called Social Media FTW with a couple of friends.

We retired that brand after three successful years but I wasn’t quite done.

So this year I started a new conference that would focus on the three most important channels for businesses and organization today: search, social & mobile. These are the Agents of Change.

Earlier today we launched the website for The Agents of Change Digital Marketing Conference.

This all-day conference is happening in Portland, Maine and online on 9.14.12. 

And while the speaker lineup is just getting started, we’ve got some amazing speakers already lined up:

• Chris Brogan, co-author of Trust Agents and Google+ for Business
• Amy Porterfield, co-author of Facebook Marketing All-In-One for Business
• Derek Halpern, brains behind the insanely popular marketing website Social Triggers
• Rich Brooks, who hasn’t done anything, but might. One day.

So, how much are tickets? you’re probably wondering.

The physical ticket is $199 and the digital ticket is $99. The digital ticket gives you access to the live stream and you can watch the presentations over and over again for a full year!

But for a limited time only, we’re offering an early bird ticket: you can get the physical ticket for only $99 and the digital ticket for only $49…that’s over 50% off each!

But wait…there’s more!

If you order the physical ticket by 11:59pm, Tuesday, 5.1.12, we’ll throw in the digital ticket for free! (And yes, it’s still only $99. That’s $298 worth of edutainment for only $99!) Why would you want both the physical ticket AND the digital ticket? So you can watch all the presentations over and over again, or see presentations you may have missed.

If you can’t make it to Portland, Maine on 9.14.12 we’ve still got an amazing deal for you. The digital ticket is only $25 during this 36 hour sale!

Whether you plan to attend in person or virtually, don’t miss this amazing, very limited sale.

Get your tickets now!

Rich Brooks
Agent of Change 

Dear Rich,

I have a full time job, but I’m very passionate about staying healthy, eating right, and exercising, all on a limited budget.

I want to start a blog so I can share my story, provide tips and advice, and help others. 

I also want to make some money doing it!

Can I have a blog without a website? If so, how can I monetize my blog?

– Monetizing in Machais

Dear Monetizing,

You can definitely have a blog without a traditional website. However, these days the line between blog and website is so blurry as to be inconsequential. Your blog will probably have several static pages, such as an About page and a Contact page at a minimum. 

One way you can make money from your blog is by selling ads. Unless you get a huge following you’ll probably never be able to quit your day job this way, but it will offer you passive streams of income. You could start with Google Adsense, which is probably the easiest way to get going. There are also plenty of blog-specific ad networks out there, including BlogAds.

If you want to increase the money you make off of each ad you’ll have to sell them yourself, which can be more time consuming for both the sales process and managing the ads yourself.

Advertisers will be interested in how many people they can reach through your blog, so you’ll need to build your numbers up. 

You may want to check out 25 Ways to Promote and Market Your Blog to get more traffic.

If you’re wondering what to charge, find similar blogs that take advertising and ask for their advertising rates. (Note: this does require some subterfuge. Try not to mention you’re soon to be a direct competitor. And who knows? If they’re undercharging, maybe you should advertise your blog on theirs!)

Another way you can make money off your blog is through affiliate programs. There are probably plenty of books on Amazon that you’ve read and could recommend through your blog, taking a little bit of each sale through the Amazon affiliate program. Likewise, there may be inexpensive athletic equipment you could recommend. These affiliate links could be within blog posts themselves (although by law you need to mention that it’s an affiliate link) or posing as ads in the side columns.

You should also check out sites like Commission Junction and ClickBank. Through these affiliate marketplaces you can find products with affiliate programs that are in line with your values and the message of your blog.

A third way to make money off your blog is by creating, promoting and selling your own e-product. Maybe you could put together a book of inexpensive recipes or workouts that don’t require expensive equipment or a gym membership. Maybe you could create an e-book called 101 Ways to Get Exercise Out of Every Day Activities or a video program that shows how to exercise using items found around the house.

Using services like e-junkie or 1ShoppingCart you can then sell these virtual goods to the audience you’ve attracted.

Do you have any other ways in which you’ve made money from your blog? Let us know!

Rich Brooks
Blog Monetization 

That was the question that we pondered as we worked on a pilot program with Braden Buehler of Narrative Design for The Rogers Collection, a Maine-based importer of luxury foods. They wanted to promote Pio Tosini’s prosciutto in an engaging fashion, and build their email list at the same time. 

There are already plenty of fine food importers experimenting with QR codes on product packaging and in catalogs. At Rogers, they decided to engage their customers while they stood at the deli counter, eyeing the prosciutto.

“Pio Tosini Prosciutto de Parma is a premium purchase for any shopper, and with good reason. Their melt-in-your-mouth ham has been hand-selected, deboned, trimmed and cured over 500 days in salt and Mediterranean sea breezes by the Pio Tosini family exactly the same way for over a century.

“You can taste the difference immediately. But how to convince customers to take that first taste, and then to treat themselves?”

(Yes, I totally stole that from Braden!)

To get the QR codes in place they needed buy in from the butcher shops. The good news was that the butchers, shop owners and distributors already swear by Pio Tosini prosciutto.

The campaign was a great reminder to showcase it and talk it up to customers. The Rogers Collection reached out personally to the distributors and retailers participating in the promotion to explain the campaign, and offered discounts and prizes to the locations with the highest participation rates. The response was overwhelming.

The next challenge was to create an offer interesting enough that people would be willing to take out their smart phones and scan the QR code.

Cue the prosciutto. An entire leg’s worth.

That was certainly enough of an incentive. (Unless you are a vegetarian. But then, chances are, you’re not standing in front of a deli counter, drooling over aged cuts of meat.)

People who scanned the QR code were taken to a special, mobile-friendly landing page:

Unique QR codes allow Rogers to track which deli generates the most signups. 

Once the shopper has entered the contest (by entering their name and email) they are directed to a second page with a video and recipe ideas:

The contest is just getting going, but as we collect more data we’ll share it here. 

In the meantime, go eat some prosciutto! 

Rich Brooks
Mmmm…prosciutto. 

A few months ago I checked into the Lenox Hotel for my brother’s 40th. (Yes, he’s significantly older than me.)

We were told that the room we had originally booked was not available, but they would upgrade us to one of their suites.

Needless to say, my wife and I were completely stoked by the news.

The room was beautifully furnished, had views out two windows (one shown above,) and plenty of room to move around.

It got me thinking of all the times we go to pick up a rental car and get the upgrade to a bigger vehicle, and how happy that makes us. (It almost makes up for that Dante-esque line they make us wait in.)

So much of the customer experience is managing expectations. 

Promise people an 12″ sub and give them a 10″ sub and you’re a thief. Promise a 8″ sub and deliver that same 10″ sub and you’re a hero. (No pun intended. Seriously, I only caught the pun on re-reading this.)

Managing expectations from the beginning of the relationship and then over delivering on those expectations is a sure way to ingratiate yourself to your customers and clients. When they’re pleasantly surprised they leave happy and tell others.

As business owners, we need to create upgrades within our business.

Upgrades don’t have to be costly, but they should be unexpected.

So, what’s your upgrade?

Seriously, feel free to share your thoughts below.

Rich Brooks
Lenox Fan 

I enjoy my segments as the “tech guru” or “tech expert” (depending on who’s interviewing me) on 207, but I don’t generally get to talk about technology as it pertains to small business marketing.

So, I was very excited when they suggested I do something that focused on small business. (95% of Mainers are employed by a small business, so it’s something that affects a lot of us.)

Of course, you can’t get too in depth in 5:27, especially for a topic that spawns multi-day conferences with multiple tracks. However, I did my best.

You can watch the video below or at the 207 site on a page entitled Tech Guru Rich Brooks on SEO.

If you’d to learn more, check out this week’s flyte school lunch & learn I’m doing (if you live within driving distance of Portland, Maine) or the Search Engine Optimization: Rank Higher, Sell More! webinar I’m putting on.

Below are my notes from the segment:

Overview:

Although most Maine businesses and non-profits have websites, many of those sites are difficult to find at the search engines. Today we’re going to take a look at some changes you can make to your own website to rank higher at the search engines, attract more traffic and generate more leads.

Q: What can Maine businesses & non-profits do to rank higher at the search engines?

A: To oversimplify SEO (search engine optimization) there are two parts: what you do on the page and how many quality incoming links you have.  
     
Q:  What can you do on the page?

A: Your page should address the biggest problems your ideal customer has, using their language.

Q: How do you know what words your customers use at Google?

A: Use tools like Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool, a free tool that shows you how many people are searching for that term as well as how many other websites compete for that term. You should look for opportunities where there are a lot of people searching for a phrase but it’s not highly competitive.

Q: Now that we know what words to use, what do we do next?

A: You should work your keywords into critical places on your page, like your title tags, headers, body copy and intrasite links…links from one page to another.

Q: You also said that getting incoming links is important. What is an incoming link and why is it so important?

A: An incoming link is a link from another website or blog to your website. Search engines see these incoming links as votes of confidence. The more quality incoming links you have, the more the search engines see your content as relevant and important, so they rank you higher.

Q: What else can businesses and non-profits do to improve their search engine optimization?

A: A blog, online videos (YouTube), and social media can help, too.

Rich Brooks
SEO for Small Business

Dear Rich,

I run a commercial cleaning business and I’ve been using social media for almost a year. I have been blogging three times a week, creating videos, and tweeting several times a day. We have a Facebook page that gets updated multiple times a day but has very few fans and only my employees and family members engage with it, and only when I threaten them! Even when we ran a contest with an iPad 2 as a prize we only got a handful of new likers.

We set up a Google+ page for our business, but almost no one has circled us, despite the fact that we’re putting out fresh content daily.

Most importantly, in looking at our traffic reports, almost no traffic comes from our social media activity, and none of our new clients mention social media when we ask how they found us.

What are we doing wrong? I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall.

–Confounded in Cornish

Dear Confounded,

It’s definitely frustrating when you are doing “all the right things” with social media marketing and still not getting any results. For many other small businesses you’d probably be knocking it out of the park.

However, for your audience, which I’m guessing are building owners, controllers, and property management companies, they’re just not using social media, at least not for the purposes of finding and engaging a new commercial cleaner.

As much as “social media” is a game changer, there’s still some important truisms you can’t ignore: you need to go where your audience is.

Now, not being a building owner or property management guy, I’m just guessing, but I’m probably only looking for your service when I take on a new building or I’m dissatisfied with my current vendor. When I do that I might turn to my social networks to ask for recommendations, but I certainly don’t need to engage with vendors on the chance I might need such a service down the road.

I would probably be more likely to wait until I had a need and then do a search at Google (if I didn’t ask a friend.) So, I would recommend cutting way back on your social media marketing, and focusing on your search engine optimization, especially how you rank in local search.

One platform I noticed you didn’t mention was LinkedIn. I would think that LinkedIn would be one of your best platforms to use, because of it’s focus on B2B. You could join local groups and network with other people in the group. This would increase your visibility and should increase your referrals.

Hope this helps!

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

Photo Credit: Uwe Strasser

As part of flyte‘s commitment to education this year, we’ll be putting on monthly lunch & learn seminars we’re calling flyte school.

And as part of my commitment to not hog the spotlight all the time, I’m teaming up with some amazing marketing experts to help me out.

The first one is Tobin Slaven of Dream Local. He’s going to be presenting on The Perfect Storm: Social-Local-Mobile.

Last year social media was all the rage, but 2012 will mark the widening gap between businesses that are harnessing social and the power of word of mouth advertising versus those who are going to miss the boat. This presentation will focus on the new consumer and how their use of tools to tune out and filter away traditional forms of advertising, is creating a whole new opportunity for customer service marketing.

Key takeaways will include several free or low cost tools any small business owner can use to build and monitor their brand reputation on social media, local search, and mobile phones.

Sounds awesome, and I’ve seen Tobin present before a number of times. He’s got great material and an easy-to-follow style.

Once Tobin’s done I’ll be presenting on Search Engine Optimization: Rank Higher, Sell More!

You know that search engines can provide your business with loads of new prospects, but why aren’t you getting as much traffic as you’d like? Why are your competitors ranking higher than you? What can you do to increase your search engine visibility? In this seminar, you’ll learn how to improve your organic search engine ranking and drive more qualified leads to your Web site.

Attendees will learn:

• How to uncover which keyword terms will drive qualified leads to your site
• What on-page changes will increase your search engine visibility and how to make them
• How to get more incoming links to improve your search engine ranking
• The Do’s and Don’ts of search engine optimization

Lunch is included with your ticket.

Seating is limited, so act now! Early bird tickets are available only through January 31st.

Date: Thursday, 2/16/2012
Time: Noon – 2:30pm
Place: Rines Auditorium, Portland Public Library (directions)
Cost: $35 early bird, $50 angry bird

If you can’t make it to Portland, Maine, be sure to check out our web marketing webinars.

Rich Brooks
Maine SEO

In the final tenet of Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he examines scarcity.

Like reciprocity, commitment & consistency, social proof, liking and authority before it, scarcity has an undue influence on us due to our desire for shortcuts.

We have been trained that things that are rarer have more value than things that are common. Therefore, to make things appear to have more value, marketers can promote or even fake the scarcity of an object or information.

Like many people, I subscribe to a number of daily deals, like LivingSocial. I know that if I don’t act now, I’ll miss out on 50% off a massage, food  or snow tires. Interestingly, I’ve noticed I’m less compelled to buy a daily deal these days because I know that if I miss this half-off yoga class, there will be another one from a competing studio next week. The deal is still a good one, but the scarcity has been removed.

Scarcity also plays on our fear of loss. In one example from the book, homeowners who were told how much they would lose by not insulating their house bought at a much higher rate than another group that was told how much they would save.

We also hate to lose our freedom; when an object becomes scarce or won’t be available much longer, we don’t want to lose our freedom of choice, so we find the object more desirable. In one study, people who tasted a cookie from a jar with only two cookies found the cookie more delicious than an identical cookie in a nearly full jar.

What I found even more interesting was a sales experiment for a beef company. The first group of customers were given the standard sales pitch. The second group heard the sales pitch plus were told that there would soon be a beef shortage, and not all orders would be filled. The third group heard what the second group heard, but they were also told that this information was secret, and most people didn’t know about the upcoming shortage.

The evidence was clear, as the second group bought more beef than the first group, but the third group bought even more. Scarcity of product combined with a scarcity of information proved an overwhelming sales tool.

So, how can you use scarcity to improve your web marketing and social media activity?

Scarcity works well in all types of marketing and sales, but here are a few ways you can use it yourself:

• Create a member-only group. Provide these members with information only available to them and sell membership at a premium.
• Limit seats. Limit the number of seats for your next webinar or seminar.
• Use early bird discounts. Offer discounts for people who purchase before an upcoming date. Announce this when tickets first go on sale, and then again as the deadline approaches. An alternative approach is to off a certain number of discounted seats and once those are gone, they’re gone for good.
• Give special offers to a small mailing list. Start by giving people on your internal list a special opportunity to buy early, before you announce it to everyone.

Scarcity is a powerful motivator. Do you have any other ideas on how to use scarcity in your web marketing? If so, please leave a comment below. But please hurry…comments will only be open for one week, then they’ll be closed forever!

The Rich Brooks
One of a Kind

Photo Credit: Kim-bodia

We’ve discussed the power of reciprocity, commitment, social proof and liking in Robert Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, so far. Now it’s time to look at the power that authority holds over us.

Like social proof, authority gives us a short cut in dealing with the complexity of the modern world. We listen to our doctors about health care issues, professors about scholarly matters, and talking heads on TV for everything from child-rearing to national security issues.

Often, this is a good thing. People often become authorities after years of rigorous study. However, in a famous experiment by Stanley Milgram, average people were persuaded to shock another person to near death by a person wielding nothing more than a clipboard and a white lab jacket. (Thankfully, there was no electricity and the person being “shocked” was a confidant.)

Experiment after experiment showed that humans are completely unaware of the amount of autonomy they give over to others, just because of a title, clothing, or trappings.

Let’s keep in mind here, that our goal is to become effective, ethical web marketers. To that end, we need to establish our authority, not fake it.

Here are some techniques you can use to establish authority and improve the results of your online marketing:

• Establish your authority…via blogs, video, etc. Not only will people see your expertise (even if you don’t hold an M.D. or other degree), members of the media will find your blog or video and interview you as an expert on the subject. The number of times I’ve been described as an expert because I wrote one blog post on the subject is astounding. Blog posts have gotten me interviews in both Inc. magazine and CNN.com.
• Use an authority figure. Not an authority (yet) yourself? It’s easy to find someone who is and leverage their authority. A vitamin maker could interview a doctor on the benefits of the vitamin. A maker of dog products could use a dog trainer to pitch her wares.
• Leverage authority from other sources. How many blogs and websites promote the fact they were featured on Oprah, or NPR, or FastCompany.com?
• Brand yourself. In today’s world, you don’t need a formal title to establish expertise and authority. Just ask The Ezine Queen, The Dog Whisperer, or The Diet Ninja.
• Create virtual trappings. It’s been said that visitors to our website make a decision about is in just a few seconds. A generic template isn’t going to cut it. Invest in a custom design, logo, and photography.

Perhaps the best place to establish your authority is by adding intelligent comments to a well-respected blog…like this one. Go ahead and share an example of how you have used authority in your online marketing…or an example you’ve seen.

In my fifteen years as a web marketing authority, I’ve seen the value of a well-constructed comment on an industry blog, so get commenting. Don’t make me take out my clipboard.

Next Weapon of Influence: Scarcity

Rich Brooks
You Will Respect My Authoritah!

You like me! You really, really like me!

In Robert Cialdini’s book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, he talks about the tenets of influence. So far we’ve seen reciprocity, commitment & consistency, and social proof in action, and now we move on to liking.

It’s no surprise that we’re influenced by people we like…what’s surprising is the degree to which we’re influenced by people we like, or even those who leverage the names of people or things we like. (This is why the Tupperware party is so powerful, and why organizations send our kids’ friends to sell us candles and popcorn buckets we don’t need.)

We can see this at work on some of our favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, that “suggest” that we might like a number of other people on the network, thus strengthening the network and lessening the chances that we’ll leave. The social ads on Facebook are similar, when they show a product and let us know a friend “likes” it.

There’s a number of things that impact our liking of a person or brand:

• Physical attractiveness: You want to think you’re above such things, but you’re not. Study after study proves how susceptible we are to the physical attractiveness of people, even when we don’t realize we are. 
• Similarity: In one study, marchers in a anti-war demonstration were more likely to sign a petition by a like-dressed person…even without reading the petition!
• Compliments: It’s amazing what we’ll do when someone says “I like you” in word or deed. Studies show it doesn’t even matter if the compliments are true. (But seriously, your hair does look great today.)
• Contact and cooperation: Studies have shown that the more we see a face, the more likely we are to believe what comes out of it is true!
• Conditioning and association: This is why we hate the weatherman and why we blame the messenger. The flip side of this is associating our offering with something positive. When an attractive model was shown next to a new car, men were more likely to rate the car as faster, better built and more expensive. None of them believed this when it was brought to their attention. (Men…right?) This could explain some of the “green washing” that’s currently going on right now as brands want to be seen as green.

So how do you use this in your own web marketing and social media?

Unfortunately, most of you just aren’t as physically attractive as I am. However, eating right, exercising and wearing flattering clothes can help. Comb overs are a definite no-no.

Here are some ideas on how you can improve and bank on your own likeability:

• Be attractive. OK, maybe being physically attractive is mostly in your genes, but on the Internet no one needs to know you’re a dog. That didn’t actually come out the way I meant. I mean, a smiling profile pic can go a long way. Also, confidence (not to be confused with arrogance) is an attractive feature. A positive attitude can help, too. Studies show that positive tweets get shared a lot more than negative ones.
  
• Act similar to your customers. I’m not talking about being a fake, but I am suggesting that you use the same language that they do. This is especially true as you write articles and blog posts; you need to be talking about the same things they are, and using the same words they do so they’ll find you when they do a search at Google. 
• Be complimentary. Again, don’t fake it. But you can certainly find positive things to say about people through social media, directly in emails, and through other venues. We all know that guy who makes snide remarks and is always trying to cut people down. It didn’t work for him, did it?
• Be everywhere. Or at least appear to be everywhere. I’ve heard time and time again that people always see me on LinkedIn. In actuality, I only spend a few minutes a week at LinkedIn, but I subscribe to the daily email digest of relevant groups, and join in the conversation when I have something to add. I’ve talked to many other social media marketers who always seem to be on Twitter, but are only on there 15 minutes a day in short bursts.
• Associate your brand with popular topics. Create blog posts that tie into current or past pop culture icons that have positive associations for your customers. 10 Things I Learned About Self-Esteem from Miss Piggy or The Amazing Spider-Man Guide to Responsible Word Power.

Do you have any examples of how you’ve used liking in any of your web marketing or social media campaigns? Did it work? Be sure to let us know in the comments below. I promise I’ll like any reasonable comment.

Next Weapon of Influence: Authority

Rich Brooks
Voted Most Likeable Boss At Flyte 15 Years Running