Information Sells

Many business owners begin blogging by opening an account at WordPress.com. While there are advantages to using WordPress.com as a hosting service, they don’t compare to the benefits of hosting your own blog on your own site.

Worry about complicated installation instructions and bewildering Linux commands stops many people from taking advantage of Open Source software such as WordPress. But there is no reason to hold back. It’s a snap to install WordPress on your web site if you have CPanel and Fantastico. Although WordPress says that a normal, manual installation takes only five minutes, with Fantastico it takes even less. You don’t need any skills or network saavy.

This short video will demonstrate how easy it is to add a WordPress blog to your web site. Click the start button to begin watching.

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Aim Your Bullet Points and Let Them Take Wing

This isn’t PowerPoint. This is blogging. This is content. This is writing. In this universe, bullet points are good. Or, at least, they can be, if their aim is true. Use your Bullet Points for good, not evil, and they’ll be an effective tool - even in PowerPoint.

Bullet Points summarize and break up long chunks of copy.

They tell your reader, “Here’s the heart of the argument. Even if you don’t have time to read everything, read me.” And, if your bullet points are artful enough, once the reader skims them, she’ll continue reading the rest of the copy.

But… and here’s the danger …crummy bullet points say, “Run! Get away while you can. There is nothing for you here.”

Good bullet points sell. Take the time to understand how bullet points work, and you’ll boost your sales. It’s as simple as that.

The Basics of Bullets

• Bullet Points Are Headlines
• Bullet Points Offer Compelling Benefits
• Bullet Points Encourage Scanning
• Bullet Points Hold Readers’ Interest

What did you notice about the construction of that list? Most importantly, the list obeyed the two most commonly broken rules of bullet points:

• It was Parallel
• It was Symmetrical

In a Parallel List, each point will have the same sentence structure. If you want to check for parallelism, add a short one or two word introduction to the beginning of your list and then read each point as though it were the continuation of the sentence.

For instance, if you are extolling the virtues of eBay, you might write…

eBay is:

• The most visited ecommerce site on the internet
• A simple and low cost way to start selling online
• An addiction for online bargain hunters

You can see how each point follows the same structure, using the same parts of speech.

Now think about this type of commonly (poorly) written list…

eBay’s great because

• eBay is the most visited ecommerce site on the internet
• Driving traffic from you blog, you can earn a rebate
• Save on listing fees if you own an eBay store

That second bullet point throws the list out of whack. The sentence structure follows no pattern. The first point starts with a noun. The second starts with a participle. The third whips your head around again by starting with a verb. There is no parallel structure from one line to the next.

But at least there is symmetry.

A Symmetrical List has the same number of lines and the same look from point to point. Writing long, complex sentences, or even short paragraphs, causes asymmetrical lists. Don’t let your reader get lost in a wilderness of words. Keep your bullet points short and snappy.

One thought clearly expressed = one bullet point.

Photo by Raziel. Released under Creative Commons License

How To Build A Web Site For Your Business - Part 3

The average low cost web site is hosted on a Linux server. Whether you personally use - or even know the first thing about - Linux is unimportant. Choosing a Linux plan like BlueHost’s is a good idea. Linux is a very stable server platform and it is free (unlike Unix and Microsoft server software). That’s one of the reasons Linux plans can be so inexpensive.

Linux has another advantage in web hosting. The web master’s (that’s you) connection to the server is usually a simple, graphical interface called CPanel. CPanel has a point and click structure that allows you to configure email accounts, upload files, add domains, and perform similar administrative tasks.

One of CPanel’s hidden gems is Fantastico De Luxe, which can be found under Software/Services.

Fantastico in CPanel Software/Services

Fantastico is a collection of One Click instllation scripts that will give you access to some of the most popular open source applications on the internet. For instance, among its many offerings, Fantastico includes WordPress, Joomla, Simple Machine Forums, and OS Commerce. All can be added to your web site by simply pointing and clicking. If you’ve ever tried to install any of these programs manually, you’ll appreciate what a dream one click installation is!

If your business web site requires anything beyond the most basic HTML pages, be sure you web hosting company offers CPanel with Fantastico. Anything else is just too much work.

How To Build A Web Site For Your Business - Part 2

Domains can be linked together in many ways

Not too long ago, when web storage space was still measured in MB instead of GB, each web site required its own web hosting plan. The plan might have cost anywhere from free to pretty darned expensive. But, whatever you paid, One Domain = One Account.

Now storage capacity is measured in terabytes and the cost is trivial. Hosting companies no longer compete by offering 100 MB of storage, or 500 MB, or even 5 GB. Instead, they offer unlimited domains.

This is a very good thing for internet entrepreneurs.

With a good hosting company, like BlueHost or HostGator, you can add as many domains as you need under just one account, for as little as $7.00 per month. (That sort of low rate will require a multi-year contract. If you are signing up for only one year, expect to pay about $10.00 per month.)

Of course, before you can point your new Add-on and Parked domains to your web hosting account, you’ll need to register them with a domain registrar like GoDaddy.com. This is an additional and entirely separate step. It is accomplished through the registrar, not the web host. Once that’s taken care of, you are ready to start.

What Are The Different Domains Types?

There are three different types of domains

• Subdomains
• Add-on Domains
• Parked Domains

Each offers something different, and each one may be useful to an internet retailer. Here’s a breakdown.

Subdomains

Subdomains are a section of your original domain. If, for instance, your domain is called mywebsite.com, a subdomain’s URL would be subdomain.mywebsite.com

Subdomains are organized as folders under the root structure of you domain. If you look at your site with some sort of file manager, the subdomain will appear to be just another folder.

So why use a subdomain at all? Say you’ve added a forum and you want its name to be prominently featured and easy to remember. Promote the bulletin board to a subdomain. The subdomain would still be associated with your regular URL, but users would find it by typing in a URL such as forums.mywebsite.com

Most hosting plans offer unlimited subdomains.

Add-On Domains

An Add On Domain is a totally separate web site, complete with its own URL and files, hosted under the same account as the original domain. When sites like BlueHost offer Unlimited Domains, they are saying you can have as many different web sites or blogs as you can manage for just one monthly fee, instead of paying for a new hosting plan for each site. This can add up to a considerable savings, especially for people running something like BANS sites. You could have 5, 10, or 100 small affiliate-income generating sites for $7.00/month - total.

Parked Domains

Finally, Parked Domain point to an existing site. For instance - suppose people regularly mistype the URL for your web site. Maybe your business is called “Clover City Sells” and, when you say it, people hear “Clover City Sales” instead.

If even 5 visitors out of 100 mistype your URL and - instead of seeing your web site - see a page that says “Web Site Not Found,” it could be terrible for your business. What’s the solution? Register the second domain (clovercitysales) and park it. The parked domain’s visitors will automatically land on the CloverCitySells web site.

With a parked domain, two different domains (URLs) lead to one web site.

Again, the ability to host unlimited parked domains can be a real money saver. You can register common misspellings of your domain or you can register other domain extensions (like .net or .biz) to prevent competitors from grabbing them. The only extra expense is the few dollars per year you’ll spend on the domain registration. You won’t even need to spend time creating a web page to redirect your visitors.

Photo by ~Dezz~ Used under Creative Commons License

The Web

Before we go any farther, let’s get a few definitions out of the way.

Domain Name

The Domain Name, as you probably know, is the name of your web site. For instance, Ghost Leg Media’s domain is ghostleg.com.

URL

URL stands for Universal Resource Locator. Just as your street, city, and state address on an envelope tells the post office where to deliver your mail, the URL defines your address on the internet. You’ll usually see the URL written out as something like http://www.ghostleg.com/blog/ In other words, it’s that name you type in your browser’s address bar.

Protocol

You’ll run across the word “protocol” a lot when you discuss computers. A protocol is just the way one computer communicates with another. The Internet Protocol, for instance, is the way computers communicate on the internet, and that’s really all we need to know about that.

IP Address

In geek speak, IP stands for “Internet Protocol.” Your web site’s true IP address isn’t the domain name. It’s a series of numbers, like “72.14.207.99″ That’s the IP address for Google. Whether you type 72.14.207.99 or www.google.com into your browser’s address bar, you should be taken to the same place. A complex system known as Domain Name Servers (usually abbreviated as DNS) translates the human-readable name (like google.com) into the computer-readable numerical IP address (72.14.207.99).

Registrar

SInce the internet requires every domain name to be unique, there needs to be some sort of central system to keep track of domains and to parcel out new ones. This service is performed by Registrars. When you want to buy a domain name, you go to a registrar like GoDaddy.com or Register.com or NetworkSolutions.com. They are accredited by ICANN to issue new domain names. By and large, all accredited Registrars offer roughly equivalent services. There is no benefit to using an expensive registrar.

Web Host

The server that hosts all your web pages is called a web host. That server may be in your broom closet or in Katmandu. It does not need to have the same operating system as your computer. Your computer will not be connected to it except when you are either viewing web pages in your browser or uploading pages via FTP.

FTP

Wait a minute - ft who now? FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol and it is just a series of commands that lets one computer (the web server) know that another computer (yours) would like to send it some data (files). Like pretty much everything else on the web, you don’t need to worry about knowing the technical details of how it works. You just need to know where to find an FTP program and what the ftp address is of your web site.

Name Servers

One of your first tasks after registering a domain and contracting for web hosting is pointing the Name Servers to your web host’s computers. Your web host will tell you the correct Name Server addresses ( which will usually look something like NS1.bluehost.com) You then take this information to your registrar and enter it into the Name Server form somewhere in your My Account area at your registrar’s site.  Most web hosting companies have two or more name servers (as a precaution in case one is down). So you’ll probably have an NS2.whoever.com or NS3.whoever.com address as well as an NS1.whoever.com addreess.

Putting It All Together

As you can see, none of this technical sounding stuff really requires any technical knowledge. IT administrators all over the world are sweating the small stuff so we don’t have to. Once you learn a few simple terms, you are ready to perform all the administrative tasks that precede going live with your new site.

Web Photo by ecstaticist, Licensed under Creative Commons

Finding the right music for your You Tube video just got a little easier. You Tube has introduced a new feature called Audio Swap. They have licensed music in a variety of genres, which you can overlay on your videos audio track.

The new You Tube music will replace any exisitng audio - so this feature is only for videos with no spoken narration. The selection is limited, but it is certainly an improvement over having your work yanked because of a copyright violation claim.

I made a short (under 3 minutes) video demonstration how it works. Click on the play button below:

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Get Ideas from Magazines

The easiest way to sell a product is to find people who have already spent money on something and then sell them a similar item.

But how do you know when people care enough to buy? One sure sign of a passionate interest in a topic is reading about it.

People read about their hobbies to learn more. Even better from a product developer’s viewpoint, they buy magazines (small monetary investment) to not only learn more but to buy more as well (larger investment).

You can find your niche audience and research its habits just buy browsing through a well stocked magazine stand.

Long Tail Research

Don’t just flip through Time or Oprah or Better Homes and Gardens. Look for magazines you’ve never heard of.

If you are selling to home owners, read Sunset, read Organic Gardening, then use them as guides to search out ever more specialized magazines. And don’t just read the articles and look at the display ads, read the classified ads as well. Small businesses that choose not to invest in full color ads market to popular - and profitable - niches through the classifieds that are found in the back pages of many niche magazines.

What specialty products’ popularity can you piggy-back on?

On one of the forums that I read regularly, someone asked if there was a way, using Audacity, to bleep out a swear word in an interview without otherwise editing the interview.

This isn’t a situation that comes up every day, but there are certainly times when you’ll want to bleep - rather than cut - a few seconds of audio. If you use Audacity, this is a quick fix, requiring only a few mouse clicks.

The short video below shows how it is done.

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Choose the correct word - your readers will thank you.

Confusing Words “is a collection of 3210 words that are troublesome to readers and writers. Words are grouped according to the way they are most often confused or misused.”

Can You Tell Who Is The Benefit and Who Is The Feature?

Everyone has heard that you should emphasize benefits not features. For some products, this is a fairly straight forward dichotomy:

Feature: Airbags
Benefit: Survive the crash

Feature: Blu-Ray Compatible DVD Player
Benefit: It’s like being in a theater!

Feature: Factory installed Windows Vista
Benefit: Absolutely none

You get the idea.

But with tech products, how to videos, and information products, it can sometimes be hard to separate benefits from features. You’ll hear many a gadget lover insist that the features are the benefits. Don’t believe them. Even for the most hard core gear head, features are just features.

4 GB of RAM on a blazingly fast quad core PC is a feature, no matter what your geeky friends say. The benefit is that all their geeky friends are green with envy. They are now, if only fleetingly, supercool. Or, if they are above all that, the benefit is that they can work more productively and efficiently. (Riiigghttt…)

And I Care Why?

A feature answers the question: what is it? how many? how does it work? who made it? Sort of like the reporter’s who, what, when, where, why questions. It is a verifiable fact that may appeal to some, but not all, buyers. By itself, a feature will not close the sale. (Similar products have similar features. How do you decide which to buy?)

A benefit, however, answers the questions, “So what?” A benefit tells you what’s in it for me. Why should a buyer care about your energy efficient washer-dryer? What’s the good of having 27 blades on one razor? A benefit whispers in your ear, “Do you want to be hot or not?” while a features says, “Really, this is a very practical purchase.”

Drill Down To The Simplest Level

If you are unsure whether you are extolling your product’s features or its benefits, after every bullet point, ask yourself, “Why should I care?” If you can answer, “Because…” the because will be the benefit.

Then, again ask, “So?” You’ll be surprised by how often you can find deeper and more appealing benefits.

When at last you have a list of benefits that a child could understand, you are ready to write your copy.

If you are going to be a successful internet retailer, whether you are selling general merchandise or your own products, you need to know what shoppers are looking for. If you can find people who are actively searching for items to purchase, half of your job (the hard half) is already done.

How do you find out what’s hot? Here are seven free tools that will get you started:

1. Google Trends - track searches over time. Has the peak market for your product already passed?
2. Google Suggest - discover what words people use to search for products
3. eBay Pulse - what are the most sought after items on eBay
4. Keyword Tracker - find out what the most common keywords are on Google, Yahoo, and MSN
5. Amazon Best Seller Lists - what is your niche audience reading
6. Technorati Most Popular - what is the blogosphere talking about
7. You Tube Most Popular - which videos are the hottest today? this week? ever?

Why kill yourself selling something no one wants? The internet has made it easier than ever before to do in depth research.

Bonus Benefit! Browsing through any of these sites is almost guaranteed to give you ideas for new products and projects.

Once you achieve Viral Nirvana on You Tube (or even the lesser popularity of appearing fleetingly on the front page), your comments will be filled with SPAM. It is inevitable - and there is almost nothing you can do about it.

Look at today’s statistics for the Christian the Lion video:

Ratings and Comments

Almost 16,000 people took the time to rate the video (and it appears that they all loved it) and almost 11,5000 took the time to comment. But if you take a few seconds to scroll through the responses, you’ll notice a trend: the more popular the video becomes, the dumber the comments are.

At first, the comments actually spoke to the story. Then small skirmishes broke out between commenters. Finally, riding the coattails of the video’s popularity, the scammers, spammers, and porn distibutors moved in.

What Can You Do?

It is impossible to moderate over 10,000 comments. Of course, you can refuse to allow comments at all - but the price will be a drastic loss of viewers. You Tube promotes videos in part based on ratings and comments. Community participation is part of the Web 2.0 ethos. If you won’t allow the community to be engaged with your work, it will never be recommended, embedded, or blogged.

If you are truly trying to run a viral campaign, hoping to achieve over 100,000 hits - you must accept comments, allow ratings, live with the back and forth of viewers bickering with each other, and even accept the negative, nasty, and naughty behavior of some viewers.

Maybe You Don’t Need To Be So Popular

But if you are hoping to use the video to promote your business to a smaller audience, you don’t have to allow anomymous, foul mouthed spammers to damage your reputaion.

When you upload a video to You Tube, you have several options under “Broadcasting and Sharing.”

Broadcast & Sharing Options

It is a good practice to monitor the comments and ratings on your videos. After all, you want to know how your work is being received. As long as you are taking the time to check in on your You Tube channel, make time to also review and approve individual comments.

You set this option by clicking on the “Allow all comments with approval only” radio button in the Comments section of the Broadcast & Sharing Options.

If the options are hidden, click on the small arrow icon next to “Comments” to expand the options.

Under Video Responses, choose “Yes allow responses after I approve them”

Finally, select “Yes, allow this video to be rated by others.”

These changes to You Tube’s default settings should keep the scammers away while still respecting the mores of the You Tube community.

Reunion with Christian

It seems like everyone on earth has heard about Chrisitan the Lion by now - and has watched the You Tube video at least twice. Look at those numbers! 10,500,000 views. Dozens of people have uploaded their own versions of the video, with almost 20 million more views.  That is going viral in a big way.

If you haven’t heard the story, two young men, Ace and Robert, in the 1960’s discovered a lion cub for sale at Harrod’s in London. They hated to see him caged, and so they bought him, took him home, and named him Christian. Eventually, Christian outgrew the London flat where all three lived, and the men decided to re-patriate him to Africa, with the help of George Adamson (of Born Free fame). Chrisitian quickly adapted to the wild, where he formed a pride of his own. Ace and Robert wanted to visit him one last time and were told that, as Christian was now a totally wild lion, that was impossible. They went anyway. Watch the video to see the result.

A short time ago, Barbara Walters showed this clip on The View. The story, now over 30 years old, became an overnight sensation. It has been written about in newspapers, picked up by local TV newscasts, embedded in countless web sites, and re-run endlessly on You Tube. And, on top of that, it has sparked sales of the full story of Christian, available on DVD, and engendered a wave of donations to the George Adamson African Wildlife Preservation Trust.

According to You Tube, the original video is now:

#1 - Top Rated (All Time) - Global
#1 - Top Rated (All Time) - Pets & Animals - Global

Why Has This Video Gotten 10 Million Hits?

So what accounts for this spectacular result? Why has a 35 year old story caused such a storm?

• The video is short, so any one can make time to watch it.
• The narrative is easy to follow
• The main character (lion) overcomes a challenge (captivity)
• The suppporting characters (Robert & Ace) follow their hearts
• Goodness is rewarded
• Love endures
• The sound track perfectly compliments the subject matter

You can probably add other elements for success to that list - but the formula is simple and as old as the hills: love conquers all.

What Can You Learn From Christian The Lion?

• Tell a story that involves your audience, that has a strong emotional appeal.
• Use music to reinforce the emotional impact.

Christian’s reunion with Ace and Robert reaches its emotional climax just as the song reaches its crescendo. If you play this video with the sound off, you lose at least half of the impact. Is there a better illustration of the dictum that video is 60% audio? You may not be able to license Whitney Houston for your next You Tube video, but you can certainly find something that matches the mood of your production.

Viral Marketing

Buzz words are everywhere. The hype surrounding Web 2.0 can be overwhelming. However, despite the excessive claims, Web 2.0 is real and the benefits of embracing new techniques can be huge. The danger isn’t in jumping in, trying every new tool or forum you find. The danger is falling in love with the tools and losing site of your goals.

Meaning what?

Well - look at viral video. Everyone wants to create a “viral video” on You Tube. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have 10,000,000 hits? Woudn’t that sell product? Sadly, the answer is, “Maybe, maybe not.” Unless your viral video is naturally, organically tied to your product, 10 hits or 10,000,000 hits won’t translate into sales.

Viral or Same Old Same Old?

In fact, 10,000,000 hits doesn’t even make a video “viral.” It just makes it frequently seen - sort of like that other thing… what was it called?… oh yeah… a TV Commercial.

A viral marketing campaign, as opposed to just marketing, means *everyone* is talking about it. A real viral campaign creates an emotional reaction in the viewers that not only engages them, but also turns them into evangelists. The customers spread the word and do the selling - not the marketers.

Viral marketers are the guy everyone is talking about when, on Monday after the season’s opening high school game, everyone says, “Did you see what Blah Blah did during half time?” (Your drama students unexpectedly enacted the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat outside the concession stand.) Or “Did you see those adorable kids in the parking lot? They’re Blah Blah’s students. My son takes lessons from him.” (Your kids were a 5 piece combo playing fight songs in the back of a pick up truck. Or three different 5 piece bands playing from the back of 3 different pick up trucks parked in around the stadium).

In other words, you want your clients invested in your success. (You presumably are already invested in theirs) They love what you are doing because what you are doing is about them, not you. If that’s true, they’ll do the selling for you.

Eyes on the Prize

Going Viral - 2004

This point is really important - you need a measure of success.

Will this campaign be successful if it gets written up in the local paper? Will it be successful if it brings in 10 new students? Will it be successful if it gets 10,000 hits on You Tube?

It is very easy, with viral marketing, to forget that the buzz isn’t the goal - it is only the tool. If everyone is talking about you, but you haven’t given anyone a reason and a way to act (sign up for classes, buy your product, join your site, subscribe to your newsletter…), the buzz is meaningless.

If you want a marketing campaign to succeed, use your viral video to create buzz, and tie it to an irresistible offer.

If you are an iStock Photo fan, you already know that they offer newsletter subscribers a free stock video clip every month (as well as weekly free stock photos and free vector art). I just noticed for the first time today that this month’s video clip is in Hi Def.

I don’t know if it is meant to evoke the iconic scene in ET… or Bergman’s Seventh Seal. But, either way, it’s pretty cool that it is Hi Def.

Bergman On A Mountain Bike