Sometimes you can’t do everything yourself. You don’t have the budget to launch a big marketing campaign. Or you don’t even know where to start. One of the best ways to promote your website or business is to work together with others to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes.

The legal form of this is known as a joint venture, where two or more parties create a new entity by contributing equity and sharing revenue, expenses and control. Another form of collaboration is known as a strategic alliance, whereby the parties involved pursue common goals while remaining as independent organizations.

No matter what you call it, collaboration with others will benefit you in ways that go beyond what you can do on your own. Think about it. Each involved party comes with their own established audience, reputation, brand, networks and strengths. Some of them may overlap with your own but usually, they’ll reach people or own assets you don’t.

Some people may have more media contacts. Some may have a specific skill (e.g. design, programing) and others have an audience or customer base that you’re trying to reach. Partnering with them for short or long-term initiatives is a smart way to promote your business, on top of all the online marketing that you’re already doing.

How can you collaborate? The possibilities are endless. For example, you can run joint contests/competitions, set up incentivized referral networks, promote a co-op web product, create content together, exchange ad space or trade skills for exposure. There are many ways to collaborate for mutual benefits. It’s just about finding what works for you.

So how do you get started? Four simple steps:

1. Identify your goals. This is what you want to get out of the collaboration. Your goals will determine who you should work with and having a clear idea of what you want from the beginning will give you an immediate idea of what kind of marketing strategy you want to take, and hence who is most suitable for you.




2. Determine what you can offer. Make a list of benefits you can offer to the opposite party. For example you might have specific personal skills or a website with a built-in audience. Perhaps you’re launching a new product and give away free samples of it away. In other words, this list consists of what you can do for the other parties.




3. Create a List of Potential Collaborators. Start writing down a list of people you want to work with based on your goals, what you can offer and who you think will be potentially interested. Make the list broad: there’ll always be people who’ll turn you down so you want as many secondary options as possible.




4. Pitch the people involved. Draft up an email template and send it off to the people on your list. Try to customize your pitch by using each recipient’s name and including unique information/comments. Keep the emails short and frame them in terms of benefits. Alternatively, try pitching over the phone or a face-to-face meeting. Remember to follow up before permanently striking a recipient off from your collaborators list.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There’s no harm in reaching out to people, all you have to risk is your pride. When it comes to partnerships, you’ll be surprised with the people who will be interested in working together. Don’t automatically write yourself off, especially you have something valuable to offer to another party.

If you’ve never tried any strategic collaborations before, why not start today?

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Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself

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Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself

Back in August 2007, usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote about banner blindness and indicated that plain text, faces and cleavage (or other private body parts) were the three design elements most effective at attracting eyeballs. While Nielsen didn’t examine any popular internet websites specifically, this eye-tracking research holds true in many instances.

Take Youtube for example, it’s well known that the use of sexy screenshots can help your videos get a lot more exposure. People are much more likely to click through on videos showing cleavage or the body of an attractive male/female.

This is something that video creators/uploaders exploit to their advantage. What they do is that they insert a suggestive clip or picture within their video so that it shows up as the thumbnail. Sometimes the content of the video has little or nothing to do with the screenshot.

For example, users will click through expecting to see an attractive girl and end up watching a man talking behind a webcam. This practice is widespread and it has become a common marketing tactic for many who want more views for their uploaded videos.

Having noticed this phenomenon, Wired reports that Youtube comedian LisaNova has taken this practice one step further by offering copyright-free video clips of her role-playing as different characters. Available for download at her website, these racy videos show her acting as a sexy nurse, emo college girl and bespectacled librarian, among others.

She calls these ‘collabcharacters’ or characters you can use in collaboration with your videos. Basically you download her video clips and insert them into your videos, with the aim of using these sexy images to increase your video views. See her video below for more details:

I like how this initiative benefits LisaNova. It increases the utilitarian value of her videos. Previously, her uploaded videos were simply entertainment. People watch them and left comments. That was all. But right now, her videos have become short, tasty brand bites, the ones you can contextualize and incorporate into your own content on Youtube.

It’s a smart way to spread her name even further. People will insert her ‘collabcharacters’ into their videos and the accompanying word-of-mouth will help her get some new fans. Right now, LisaNova has 98K+ channel subscribers (a strong launchpad) and as long as she keeps creating new clips, images of her will continue to infect more and more videos out there.

She’s also doing the smart thing by asking for feedback and suggestions from other users:

I am going to be uploading tons of character collab clips, so that we don’t have too many people using the same image/clips. But I would LOVE your suggestions so please if you are planning to make a video and need a great collab clip, let me know and i will try and make it. Whatthebuck was doing a video about Kim Kardashian so I was able to make him a personalized collab clip.

By offering free customized videos, she’s making sure that her brand is malleable enough to accommodate different contexts and audiences. Content producers will seek her out. It’s a wonderful pull-strategy, especially when a site like Youtube has such a varied userbase.

She also recommended that people who use her collab clips leave an attribution link in the description box, which points back to her profile and her download site/forum. Word of mouth online is strongest when its accompanied by links. There is great value in getting free links on relevant Youtube video pages, all driving interested traffic back to her.

In essence, LisaNova has done quite a few things right: First of all, she recognized the phenomenon or trend of using sex to promote Youtube videos and found a way to leverage it. Trends are often indications of demand and it’s important to know how to read the community you’re targeting in order to increase your viral potential.

She then created and released free content. Free, because it allows zero-risk consumption, something that aids initial mass adoption/participation. This is important when you want to build influence and buzz. She then set up a new community away from the site, to allow fans to mingle with each other. This is a good way to test new initiatives and receive feedback.

Along the way, she offered to collaborate with other content producers while making full use of the medium (videos) to make her brand spread easily among myriad audience types/contexts. To sum up, this is an excellent example how to market yourself effectively in the new media environment of blogs, social media communities and user-generated content.

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Viral Marketing on Youtube: A Look at LisaNova’s Sexy Videos

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After maintaining several blogs for a couple of years, learning about web publishing and observing different niches, I have come to the conclusion that success for web publishers mainly relies on how much passion you have for the topic you cover. Not exactly a ground-breaking insight, you might say. But let me explain how I personally came to realize this.

I’ve built quite a few sites throughout my life online and the only ones that remain or thrive are the ones covering topics, for which I have a very deep and strong interest. The other sites gradually slowed down and died because I only had a passing fancy for them.

Initially, I created these failed sites because I thought the specific niche was lucrative or because I saw how well some other people were doing. When I started them, I didn’t even know much about the field. For me, it was all about getting more pageviews and transforming that into ad revenue. That was the height of my goal. And nothing more.

Over time, these sites died off because I lost interest in writing for them. I ended up spending more time on the sites about topics that I loved. I slowly built these sites up while enjoying the interaction with people in the same niche. It just felt a lot more natural.

Blogging can be difficult. It takes time and energy to write. Sometimes you’ll get busy with other things in your life. You don’t see any money or benefits. Nobody is reading you. Nobody comments. Nobody links to you. You don’t seem to grow. Even though you try.

When this happens, the only thing that will keep you going is your passion for the topic. If you are truly interested in the subject, you won’t give up easily. You won’t stop. You’ll make time to write. It won’t be a chore. You’ll enjoy it. This high level of enthusiasm overcomes the inevitable inertia you’ll sometimes face as an individual web publisher.

Image Credit: Hide N Seek

It’s not too difficult to own a profitable or influential site. You just need to give a damn. You need to really care for the site, enough to use it as a vehicle to explore the topic and share your knowledge with others. While profit is important and a part of your motivation to blog, you care more about spreading your message and getting others engaged.

I honestly believe that you can take any great interest you have and transform it into a popular website. You already have the motivation and background knowledge. All you need is to learn certain skills: for instance, like how to use social media to increase exposure for your brand as well as other online marketing methods.

The most essential thing is your passion for the chosen subject. If you love it, you’ll persist in publishing and you’ll naturally be motivated to learn how to share your content with others. Interest is by far the most important ingredient for influence and profit.

Some might suggest that you don’t need to be interested in a field to make money from it. After all, you can hire people to write and just manage the business. I agree to some extent but even when it comes to managing the business, I’ve noticed that I tend to work harder for sites I care about. Why? Because everything I do for them is more fulfilling.

The same theory applies for hiring bloggers. I’ve noticed that the ones that are the most interested or involved in the field are the ones that’ll go the extra mile to make sure an article is terrific. So make sure you hire writers that are exceedingly fervent and willing to learn. You can always train the writer and teach him/her shortcuts or skills.

You don’t want word bots that can churn out the daily post, you want a fanatic, someone who loves reading and writing the same stuff even on their off-days. Trust me, he or she will enjoy the whole process and you all will have a more meaningful relationship.

So it’s all down to passion. If I could recommend one fundamental building block towards success as a web publisher, it would be this: you should be obsessed or in love with the topic you’re writing about. Everything else can and will be sorted out over time. You’ll learn new skills. You’ll make new friends and you’ll know exactly how to grow your site. Don’t worry.

If you’re thinking about setting up a new blog and am deciding between a ‘profitable’ or ‘popular’ topic and one that you really care about, pick the one that interests you the most. For what its worth, I have found that in the end, these websites make me a lot more money and give me more influence than the other sites, no matter how lucrative they seem.

In web publishing, passion almost always transforms into influence or profit in the long run.

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Publishing for Profit and Influence: It’s All About the Passion

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Microsoft is teaming up with a charity foundation to deliver Xbox 360 kiosks to children’s hospitals across America. Each of these kiosks will come with games, movies and access to a private nationwide network that’ll allow hospitalized children to play or chat with one another.

This is great news because I think it will really make a lot of kids happy, especially when some of them easily get bored or depressed within the dreary hospital environment. I can imagine the much-needed thrill of playing video games with new friends.

I’m not doubting Microsoft’s altruistic motivations at all because I think they really did good. But I also think this is a brilliant marketing strategy for the following reasons:

1. It penetrates the target market. While video games are enjoyed by people of all ages, children are an ideal target market because marketers want to plant the seeds of brand recognition from early on: their end goal is to develop long-term consumer loyalty. Kids discharged from hospitals might continue playing the Xbox or recommend it to friends through word-of-mouth.
2. It improves the company reputation. When businesses ‘give back’ to the community or practice philanthropy, they inevitably improve their reputation. Consumers generally think better of a company if they know that it performs charity or cares about the less fortunate. This initiative is one way to improve perceptions of Microsoft’s brand.
3. It creates beneficial long-term brand associations. By entering into the hospital environment, Microsoft has created an association between therapeutic treatment and video gaming on the Xbox. This may be subtle initially but most parents or family members who visit a hospital may view the pleasure derived from video games as a supplement towards the well-being or happiness of their children.

Video game marketing starts from the initial idea for each specific product. Game designers are sent to trade shows to talk about the story behind the game. Sneaks peaks and demos are given to major game publications and made available online for hardcore early adopters.

But apart of these gimmicks, how do you increase your product exposure? By having a presence in untapped social environments. In other words, by taking the Xbox out of the home and into the hospital. And if you can improve your reputation along the way, why not?

Online marketing is the same. Seek out untapped social environments, create and promote customized products, articles or landing pages of the highest consumer relevance. Work on partnerships with others (e.g. Microsoft and a charity foundation) and focus on improving your overall reputation by conscientiously developing the most favorable brand associations.

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Microsoft’s Brilliant PR Strategy for Xbox 360: The Benefit of Untapped Social Environments

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Microsoft’s Brilliant PR Strategy for Xbox 360: The Benefit of Untapped Social Environments

Information rarely organizes itself into something coherent, usable or enriching. It usually goes through a series of filters before it reaches you: for example an algorithm developed to automatically sort data or a writer who took the time to translate the complex into the actionable.

These filters are there to make information relevant, to allow you to utilize data into a different form, perhaps a blog post or a mental footnote to be retrieved when needed. However, sometimes there’s just too much information and too little time.

If you’re a blogger or web worker, you might be subscribing a large amount of blogs in order to find content ideas or acquire knowledge. When you’re plugged into the information stream for many hours a day, it is not uncommon to feel fatigued. The end result of is that you either procrastinate on reading/learning or dive too fast through information to absorb it fully.

I’ve noticed that sometimes I don’t read everything that shows up in my RSS feed reader and even if I do, I don’t peruse the entire article or pause to think more about what the author has written (which is an excellent way to appreciate new ideas). Why? Because there’s just too much information to process and a limited amount of time/attention.

The pressure is always there to make use of whatever content is out there. You need to read fast and use a piece of news to write a blog post. You need to keep up with what’s happening in the industry in order to make yourself competitively attractive as a freelancer/business. How do you make sure that information is consistently useful without tiring yourself out?

We all want as little noise as possible. We want to consume information in a way which enriches our understanding of a topic while allowing us to easily utilize it for our personal or professional life. We want information to be helpful, not a burden on the mind or a chore to plow through. The solution is simple: we need to prioritize.

Learn to Prioritize Information for Efficient Consumption

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I opt to receive a large amount of information on a daily basis and have often struggled with managing what I read online everyday. Prioritization is a solution that allows me to transform information from a rapid stream of ideas into something I can process, understand and re-use.

The definition of prioritization is the action of arranging and dealing with things in order of importance. Vital information should be consumed first, while less important content should be processed later. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at how I organize my RSS feed reader, which will give you a good example of how to regulate the flow of data through prioritization.

In my feed reader there are two key folders, which stand out from the rest of the my feed subscriptions. The first folder is called ‘Breaking News’ and this contains the feeds of blogs, keyword alerts and news services on a range of topic categories. The second folder is called ‘Must Reads’ and these contain feeds of web sites that are non time-sensitive.

This first folder is designed to be a stream of information I check very frequently for news. The feeds here are timely, very active and consistently fast in reporting news on current events. This is a river of data that I dive into and scan every half an hour. I don’t usually read each article in full but scan for relevant content I can use for my blogs or social media sharing.

The ‘Must Read’ folder consists of the feeds that I must read by the end of the day regardless of how much time I have. They are also the ones I read first when I open my feed reader. I deliberately separated specific feeds from the information mass and deem them as necessary data to consume. The feeds in this category are few and they are strictly limited to the ones that are consistently relevant, interesting and useful to me.

This prioritization of content within my feed reader makes what I have to do exceedingly clear. To get a fast recap of what has happened concerning a topic, I only need to do a quick scan of the ‘Breaking News’ folder and nothing else. On the other hand, if I do not have enough time in a day, I can opt to ignore every feed subscription except the ones in the ‘Must Read’ folder.

How Prioritization Can Work for Social Media Data

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Let’s take the example of Twitter, a social media service that’s well known for the sheer amount of irrelvant data. Everyone is updating their Twitter stream at the same time and most people are writing about things that you have little or no interest in knowing. If you follow a good amount of users, it will be difficult to extract the signal from the noise.

So what’s the solution? Prioritize information by only monitoring people who are the most essential. These can be the ones who interest you the most, networking targets or people who consistently share the most relevant/interesting/usable links.

The easiest way to do this is to limit the amount of people you follow on Twitter. Alternatively, subscribe to the RSS feed for the important users and place them in a specific folder in your feed reader. This way, you won’t have to reduce the amount of people you track on Twitter and still ensure that you don’t miss any information.

It’s possible to do the same for all social media websites, especially the ones where users produce or influence information flow. Try to isolate the important and most essential data and track it according using RSS or site-specific features.

You can also create a bookmark to a specific page on the social media site, thereby allowing you to bypass other less relevant content. A collection of these bookmarks can be grouped in the same browser bookmark folders and opened simultaneously as well.

Social media content is always going to be noisy, especially if the website you’re using is heavily populated by many users. The prioritization filters that you set up will help you to ensure that you’re getting the the type of information that is most beneficial to you.

Use Technology As Much as Possible to Implement Prioritization

I’m sure some of you are already prioritizing the content that you view everyday. You trust some news sources more than others and regularly visit a handful of blogs which produce articles that you like to read. Mental prioritization of this sort is important but actual changes to how you receive information is equally crucial on a daily basis.

Don’t just prioritize in your head, make sure you use all the tools available to structure how content is served up to you. Do some research on browser addons or other applications you can use to segment and filter raw data. You want to manage information flow as much as possible initially. Once you have a workable system, you’ll only need to tweak it every now and then to ensure that it’s operating at maximum efficiency.

How do you manage your daily information flow? I’m interested to hear what works for you.

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Managing Information Flow: How Prioritization Will Improve Your Work and Learning Efficiency

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Managing Information Flow: How Prioritization Will Improve Your Work and Learning Efficiency