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?

For more online marketing tips, subscribe to dosh dosh.

This is an article from Dosh Dosh




Sponsor: Make money with your website or blog - Earn 50% with Referback.com

Strategic Collaborations: A Powerful Way to Promote Yourself

Social Bookmark

Read the original here:
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.

For more online marketing tips, subscribe to dosh dosh today.

This is an article from Dosh Dosh




Sponsor: Make money with your website or blog - Earn 50% with Referback.com

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

Social Bookmark

Here is the original:

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.

This is an article from Dosh Dosh

Sponsor: Make money with your website or blog - Earn 50% with Referback.com

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

Social Bookmark

Here is the original:

Darren Rowse recently wrote a series of posts about increasing your Twitter presence, in which he mainly talks about how to use Twitter by adding value in order to increase your Twitter following. While Darren made several good points, I want to give you my perspective on it, which is somewhat different.

You’re interested in increasing your Twitter followers. You want more people reading your messages. It’s not difficult to build a prominent profile but I think it’s important to start with the right understanding. This is the first thing you need to know: It’s not really about how you tweet, what you say or who you talk to but who you are.

Take a look at this list of Twitter users with the most followers and you’ll see that almost everyone on it is famous or well known for reasons other than Twitter. For example, you’ll notice that the top 10 users are mainly all people who own popular websites/businesses and brands or have established a reputation through their involvement in different activities.

Run your eyes down the list further and you’ll notice the same thing: these Twitter users built their large audience through their already established popularity. They didn’t start from the ground up: it’s likely that they started with a decent amount of followers and will continue accumulate them passively through the strength of their reputation or personal brand.

Darren has written some useful articles about Twitter on his site but he built his following mainly because he has a very popular blog and not because he was inherently entertaining or helpful as a Twitter user. In other words, he grew his large subscriber base because he cleverly integrated his brand/blog with his Twitter profile.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t develop a strong Twitter following if you are not famous for something online or offline. It can be done but in my opinion, building a Twitter following has little to do with how you use Twitter. I don’t believe that in order to get a sizeable audience, you need obsesses about specific tweeting etiquette.

I’ve never written any articles on how to use Twitter because I don’t think there’s an ‘optimal’ or best way to use Twitter, nor am I interested in regulating another person’s lifestream. Even if you’re purely using Twitter as a broadcast tool to increase your online influence, how or what you tweet is not really the thing you should be focusing on.

So let’s talk about what I think will help you to get more Twitter followers.

Maximize Visibility: Treat Your Twitter Profile Like Any Other Website

Image Credit: Tweet via QuickSilver

The first step is to understand that your Twitter profile is like any other website. You should treat it no differently from your own blog or a free opt-in newsletter. This means that if you want to increase your Twitter subscriber base, you just need to do one thing again and again: Drive web traffic to your profile. The more targeted the traffic, the better.

This sounds obvious but many people overlook this fundamental principle and focus instead on less relevant details like Twitter usage times/frequency. I’m sure that causing controversy or learning to tweet a certain way might get some extra exposure to your profile but in my opinion, the benefits are minimal. How, when and what you tweet is not crucial.

When you want to catch as many fish as possible, use a large net and spread it as far as you can. The guideline to remember when building your profile is just one: keep working on sending visitors to your profile. People can only follow you when they know you exist.

With this in mind, you can play around with a myriad number of marketing strategies, just like how you would promote a website. Think in terms of incentives. Why would someone want to follow me on Twitter? How will he or she benefit from it? Assuming that someone doesn’t know who I am, what would motivate him or her to subscribe to my Twitter profile?

Here are just some examples of traffic-driving strategies (there are many more):

1. Create a tool/application and promote your profile alongside it.
2. Buy a banner ad to target tech-savvy audiences, link it to your profile.
3. Use Twitter as a tool for tech/customer support.
4. Organize a contest through your Twitter profile
5. Include links to your profile in email/forum signatures.
6. Evangelize Twitter on your blog/other blogs and include a link to your profile.
7. Connect your blog and other social media profiles to your Twitter page.
8. Learn to pitch Twitter influencers with articles relevant to their interest
9. Explicitly ask another user to recommend your profile or exchange recommendations.

Apart from these strategies, there’s also another sure-fire way to increase your Twitter followers and this simply involves the act of following other users. Lets look at this in detail.

Mass Following Twitter Users: The Favorite Methodology of ‘Spammers’

Twitter is similar to many other social networks in numerous aspects, particularly when it comes to friending behaviors. Like Myspace, its possible to befriend a massive amount of users, some of whom will add you back as a friend. Continually adding Twitter users as friends allows you to increase the amount of followers you have.

This is a strategy that has worked remarkably well for early adopters when the Twitter was still a relatively new phenomenon. For example, I know a marketer who followed over ten thousand users and got thousands of followers in return. He then cut down the amount of people he followed and changed his username to make the account look legitimate.

Nowadays, the Twitter community has grown more aware of these ’spammers’ and many tools like the Twitter Blacklist and Twerpscan have been developed to help Twitter users weed out people who try to follow many users in order to build an large audience. Still, a portion of Twitter users (perhaps the new ones) tend to add anyone who befriends them.

Take for instance, Osen Komura. A fake profile set up by another Twitter user in February 2008 as a social experiment. The Osen account followed 41,798 Twitter users in one month and 7,847 users added him as a friend, a 17%+ follow-back rate.

And Osen is not only the only profile out there with thousands of followers all derived through mass user following. The question is: Should you consider using the same strategy?

Apart from the risk of being labeled a Twitter spammer and increasing the noise on your Twitter stream, this method still works. However, know that following so many users inevitably reduces your ability to keep track of individual users since they are drowned out by other updates, unless you conscientiously keep track of your Twitter stream or use RSS.

Scoble has suggested that it’s beneficial to follow many Twitter users because you get more access to information and it shows that you’re listening and more open to communication or meeting people. Perhaps so, but I would recommend increasing the people you follow on Twitter gradually, while making sure that you’re maintaining conversational interactiveness.

Most Twitter users don’t like it if you’re simply following him/her to broadcast a message and if you don’t monitor them equally in return or engage them in conversation. Unless you’re a popular celebrity of some sort, one-way attention doesn’t work very well for Twitter.

In any case, only viewing Twitter as a broadcast platform to drive traffic to your websites is a limited perspective, especially when your Twitter followers offer a wealth of knowledge, connections and opinions you can use to improve your business and personal skills.

Personally, I prefer building up an online reputation and driving traffic to my Twitter profile. For me, the benefits of Twitter come from using it as a conversational/networking tool, so I’m more concerned with whose updates I’m receiving daily and hence, the people I follow.

All in all, it depends on your goals and how you use Twitter. Feel free to share this article with your Twitter friends. I’ll love to get more feedback on this topic.

For articles on social media, subscribe to Dosh Dosh today.

This is an article from Dosh Dosh




Sponsor: Make money with your website or blog - Earn 50% with Referback.com

How to Get More Twitter Followers: Some Methods That Work

Social Bookmark

Here is the original:
How to Get More Twitter Followers: Some Methods That Work

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.

For more marketing tips, subscribe to dosh dosh today.

This is an article from Dosh Dosh




Sponsor: Make money with your website or blog - Earn 50% with Referback.com

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

Social Bookmark

Go here to read the rest:
Microsoft’s Brilliant PR Strategy for Xbox 360: The Benefit of Untapped Social Environments