Let’s say you create a business page, and now you want to have someone else help you edit it. To avoid having them logging into your personal facebook account to do the editing, you need to add them as another administrator to the page.

Many of my clients have set up facebook business pages, and they then approach me to help them customize them – adding custom boxes, photos and banners. On other occasions, a client might ask me to set up a business page for them, and then I need to add them as an additional administrator, so that they can log in and make changes.

Here is the illustrated version of how to add additional administrators to your business page.

I am using my business page as an example.

Step 1: Go to facebook.com and, logged in as the person who created the page, browse to the business page.

Step 2. Click on the edit page link, found under the image on the left. (see image below)

Step 3: Once you get to the next page, in the right hand column, about halfway down, it lists the administrators of the page, and there is a link for adding a new administrator. Click on that link. (see image below)

Step 4: If the new administrator is already a facebook friend of yours, just type in their name and select them. If they are not your facebook friend, or don’t have a facebook account, then enter their email address in the field provided “Add Admins Via Email”.

Then click on the blue “Add Admins” button. (see image below)

The person you have chosen will receive an email notifying them that they have been selected to help administrate the facebook page.

The subject of the email will look like the picture below (but with their name instead of mine and the name of the business page they’ve been added to):

The body of the email will look similar to the one below (but with different names), and they should click on the link to view the page.

If they are not already a member of facebook, they will be prompted at that point to create a facebook account. They need to have a personal facebook account in order to administrate the business page. If your chosen administrator already has a facebook account, they can just log in to proceed. If they don’t have a facebook account, then they can click on the link provided to sign up for one.

And that concludes how to add additional administrators to your facebook business page.

Generating passive income is a must for the self employed and creative people in this world. There are only so many billable hours in the day, and it is hard to make a living if you are just billing billable hours.

I decided to experiment with a digital product and adding it to my blog to see how easy the process would be.

Creating A Digital Product

E-books: If you are going to be selling any form of e-book, it is generally delivered as a pdf file. The best software to use to generate the pdf files, in my opinion, is adobe acrobat professional. However, there are free pdf writers available for creative people on a budget. Cute Pdf is an example of a free pdf writing software.

Audio Files: If you are going to be selling mp3 or audio files there are a number of great software options available for recording and generating mp3 files. One free software that I recommend to clients who want to generate vocal audio and not professional music quality is Audacity.

My Journey – bundling audio and pdf: I happened to purchase finale print music software several weeks back and spent a euphoric couple of days experimenting with writing beginner/intermediate piano scores. I was able to save these scores as pdf files by using adobe acrobat professional. Now I have a handful of piano scores suitable for the beginner/intermediate player and so thought to myself, why not bundle a score with mp3 file to sell digitally for this blog example?

First of all, I want people to be able to hear what it sounds like when played. Finale Print Music can generate a digitally produced  audio mp3 file of the music score. I needed to insert the mp3 file in this blog post so that people can hear a sample of the song.  Supplying a sample listen is a great idea for musicians selling mp3 files, or for experts selling audio files. If you are thinking of selling an audio file, I recommend installing the plugin below so that visitors to your site can easily listen to a sample.

WORDPRESS PLUGIN TIP: I installed the following plugin into my wordpress blog so that my audio links would be playable with an audio player.

http://wpaudioplayer.com/download

It generates an audio player just like the one here. Click on it to listen to my Simple Song 1 for the piano.
Simple Song 1

If you want to play audio on your blog, I highly recommend wpaudioplayer.

3 Examples of Digital Delivery/E-commerce Options

1. Option 1: free and the least passive:
   The first option for selling digital products would be to use paypal and then manually email people the product. Setting up a business paypal account is free, and then you can sell products and services online and paypal takes a small percentage of sales. This is the least passive option as you have to manually email people the digital product, but it is free. You can use the steps that I illustrate in this tutorial on adding e-commerce to your blog: http://goffgrafix.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/adding-e-commerce-to-your-blog/ to generate the code for your buy now button and copy and paste it into your blog post. You would then have to manually email the digital product to the customer once you receive notice of the purchase.
2. Option 2: e-junkie.com
   With e-junkie.com you can sell up to 10 products for only $5/month, and it ties into paypal. Click here to view the complete list of features that e-junkie offers. With e-junkie the process is automated. When a customer clicks the buy now code that e-junkie supplies you, e-junkie will automatically send your customer to a page to download the product when the payment goes through. They will also email the customer a time sensitive link to the product download page.
3. Option 3: 1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com
   1shoppingcart.com/marketerschoice.com is a robust and comprehensive shopping cart service that offers digital products options, autoresponder capabilities, recurring billing and much more. I use them for my hosting/web design business, so they were the obvious choice, for me, for selling digital products. After I upload my product, the cart generates a buy now link that I can just paste into this blog post below. Voila!

Purchase Simple Song 1 Piano Score for the beginner /intermediate piano player.
$2.75
Score comes bundled with mp3 file.

Listen to the score below:

Simple Song 1

Your Experience with selling digital products

Please share your experience with selling digital products. What e-commerce system do you use? Do you sell pdf files? audio files? Is there a software that you have found useful in generating digital products? Please comment below. I look forward to your input.

If you found this tutorial useful, feel free to test the button below and make a donation.

I have just discovered slide.com. With a slide.com account you can

After a slide show is created you can edit it, remove pictures and re-arrange them by dragging them into the order that you want.

After you’ve created and saved the slide show – slide.com gives you an embed code that you can copy and paste into your blog.

Make sure your text editor in your blog is set to HTML tab and not the visual tab, and paste the code in where you want the slide show.

My initial slide show looked like this:

If you don’t want all of the tabs under your slide show, you need to alter the embed code slightly.

The slide show code itself is inbetween <object></object> tags. Look at the code, highlight everything that comes after the closing </object> tag and before the final closing </p> tag, and delete it.

It won’t get rid of the review and star links at the top of the slide show, but it will remove all the black buttons under the slide show.

One thing about slide.com, is that it does not yet have a way to protect your images from having other people download them. My suggestion is to use this tool only on images that you don’t mind having people review and download. This is a social media slide show tool, and is meant for blog posts that invite discussion.

I want to share them with you.

FREE SERVICES (with upgrades)

1. yousendit.com
   Need to send a file that is too large to e-mail? With yousendit.com you can send unlimited 2GB files and folders.
2. altertra.com
   Alertra is a website monitoring service. I use its spot check to see if a website is being connected to globally. It will show you the connectivity of your website from locations around the world and how long it took them to connect to your site.
3. ipchicken.com
   Go to ipchicken.com and it will show you your current IP address.
4. domaintools.com
   I use domaintools.com to look up where a website is registered and hosted. Often my clients don’t remember where they registered their domain names, and domaintools.com is an easy way to look up the information.
5. tweetlater.com
   I have set up tweetlater to email me replies to my tweets and also tweets with keywords that interest me. On days where I don’t have time to log into twitter, I can still stay somewhat connected.

SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

1. browsercam.com
   I use browsercam’s remote access to test websites that I am developing on different platforms and browsers.
2. lynda.com
   lynda.com offers tutorials on every software that you can imagine. This is the best source for software tutorials that I have found.

Is there an online service that you use? that helps your productivity and that you swear by? Please share in the comments area.

My work can be like that too. I have had projects given to me that at first glance seem tedious, but once completed I realize that they have been a vehicle for an incredible journey. They end up teaching me new things, introducing me to new people, challenging me to learn. Each website that I design and/or program has brought me gifts. I am very grateful for the work that I do.

Have you had experiences where something that you dragged your heals at, or dreaded, ended up being a blessing?

Flickr slide shows are not the most elegant, but with the ability to add video, what a great addition this can be to your blog or website!

• on a travel site or real estate site, to show a montage of photographs and  videos of a featured location
• on a cooking site, to intersperse “how to” video and photos of the final products
• start a photo slide show with a video introduction.
• piece together a slide show of multiple videos – to create a full length tutorial or demo.

In three easy steps you can create a set of photos and videos on flickr, and then embed that set into your blog or web page.

1. Log into flickr, go to upload photos and videos (under the “You” menu in the top navigation). Upload your photos and videos. Make sure you have selected that anyone can see your photos.
2. Once your photos and videos are uploaded, click on the “Organize” link in the top navigation, and then click on “Sets and Collection”.  In the top left click on “Create a new set”, and drag your photos and videos from your photo stream at the bottom of the page onto your set. Your screen should look like this:
   

   Once you’ve dragged all the photos and videos into your set, hit the save link at the bottom of the left column to save your new set.

3. Click in the top right the link that says, “Your photostream” to return to your photos. In the right column you should see your sets. Click on the image representing the set that you want to share, and then click the “slide show” link in the top right. When the slide show loads, click the “Share” link in the top right. This will give you embed code to add it to your blog or website. Make sure you switch to the html view in your blog editor before pasting in the code.

I created a set of images of our puppy, and included a quick video that I shot this morning – just to test how it would work.

View my slide show of our miniature schnauzer, Rosco, below.

If you don’t want people to be able to download your flickr photos, when you log into flickr, in the top navigation under ‘You’, choose ‘Your account’ and then click on the ‘privacy and permissions’ tab. The first setting is “Who can download your pictures” and there is an ‘edit’ link to the far right of it. Click on that link to adjust the settings.

If you don’t want people to be able to download your flickr photos, when you log into flickr, in the top navigation under ‘You’, choose ‘Your account’ and then click on the ‘privacy and permissions’ tab. The first setting is “Who can download your pictures” and there is an ‘edit’ link to the far right of it. Click on that link to adjust the settings.

What is your experience using flickr?

Here is what I have come up with.

1. Using twitter to broadcast and promote your business & brand.

2. Using twitter as a source of incredible resources in your field – for education (I love this about twitter).

3. Using twitter to network with professionals in your field.

4. Using twitter to socialize with people who share similar interests.

Some people who twitter, sign up for multiple twitter accounts – each one geared towards a different type of interaction.

Why? Because different interactions attract and repulse different followers.

Example: If I am using twitter to promote my business – linking to blog posts and helpful resources, twitting about special offers and classes, I will get followers that are interested in what I offer, and that is what they expect. If suddenly I start chatting with someone who watches American Idol, and we start chatting back and forth about our favorite contenders, the people who are following me for business information may get annoyed and unfollow quickly. Then, when I do have a great idea or product to broadcast – my potential clients aren’t with me anymore.

It makes sense, then, to have one twitter account for socializing, and one for business.

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

ADVISE (from the mom in me)

Keep it clean -  What you twitter about is public domain, you don’t know who is listening in. It is easy to feel insulated when chatting with friends and colleagues – but keep in mind that potential clients and referrals may be reading what you write. If you don’t want to potentially damage your professional reputation, be polite, be respectful and don’t cuss.

Don’t take it personally -  It is okay if the people you follow don’t follow you back. Remember that twitter is a wonderful resource for information. Keep focused on WHY you followed them in the first place, and don’t get hung up on the popularity contest.

Expand your wardrobe – If you are going to use twitter to both promote your business, and to socialize, create more than one account – just like having your work clothes for the office and your casual clothes for the coffee shop. First impressions are important.

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

AND BACK TO MY QUESTION…

Can twitter hurt my business? I would like some feedback on this. My take is that it won’t hurt, but it might not help if you’re not clear what you’re using it for. Right now the only draw back that I see, is that it can be addicting – and can really cut into productivity if you’re not careful.

What do you think? How does twitter effect your business? And do you have some good twitter resources to recommend? Please comment.

1. FUNCTION
The first step to developing a web site is to figure out exactly what the function of that web site is going to be. By function, I mean what do you want your website to do for you, and how effortlessly or intuitively will it do it. You need to have thought out what role you want your web site to play in your business in order to have a good design developed.

For example: Is it to sell a product? Is it an on-line catalog? Does it tell a story? Is it an educational tool? Are you using it to support a cause? Is it entertainment? Do you just want it to answer a bunch of those questions that people are calling and pestering you with: hours you’re open, contact info etc.

A web site can have more than one function, however it’s critical to have a clear idea of what those are before you meet with your web designer.

2. WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
It is important to start researching who your target audience is, how they are going to find your site, what will make them stay on your site, and what you want them to do when they arrive at your site. The answers to these questions effect every step of the web design process.

3. SEO and INFRASTRUCTURE
Search engine optimization plays a critical role in how the website will be designed and programmed. The names of files, the type of coding, the directory structure all add to that mysterious algorithm of how well your site will be indexed by the search engines.

Before programming a website, some research needs to be done on the keywords you would optimize with to attract your target audience.

I always design my content management systems so that my clients can update their content and meta tags, but beyond this, I can name the very files and directories that make up the site with keywords.

There are different options in how to code a website, and these will need to be discussed in relationship to search engine traffic (css, flash, html). Even if you opt to use a blog platform for your website,  the research you do on keywords will help you when you create your categories, tags and name your posts.

4. USABILITY
Marketing and usability should play a role in the website design and structure.

The graphic design isn’t just pretty, it’s usability. It is important to be clear about what you want visitors to do when they get to your site. There is lots of research on what parts of a web page people look at the most, how colors effect behavior, how to write effective content for your target audience. The graphic design and layout of content is a balance between visual branding and persuasion. Here are some good resources on usability.

If you plan on working with an SEO specialist and/or marketing specialist, my advise is to have them meet with you and the website programmer/development team so that everyone is on the same page.

The last thing you want to do is build a website and after it is built, have an SEO person or marketing person tell you it needs to be redone in order to attract and keep visitors.

Everybody is tightening their budgets right now, and where to place your online advertising dollars is a big question. Not only does google analytics let you see which websites are sending traffic to your website, it lets you search those statistics.

Today one of my online advertising links was up for renewal. I thought to myself, before I spend this money, I want to see if this site is actually directing visitors to me. I logged into google analytics. I clicked on the date range and set it from January 1st, 2008 until the present. I clicked on “Traffic Source” then clicked on “Referring Sites”, and it pulled up a graph with the site usage starting with the sites that refer the most traffic – but here is the secret weapon – at the bottom of that graph is a search field.

I typed in the name of the website that was selling me the link to see exactly how much traffic they had sent me last year. I found out the exact number of visits to my website in one year resulted from that advertising. What a powerful tool this is! Now, with the help of google analytics, I can make really informed decisions, very easily, about what sites are sending me clients and which aren’t. Being able to search the data for the specific website address is an incredible feature. It saved me so much time. With just two clicks, I could see exactly how much traffic a given site was sending me within a specific date range.

If you don’t have a google analytics account, and you run a blog or website, I encourage you to sign up for one today. Being able to view referring sites is the tiniest fraction of the useful information that it will supply to you concerning the visitors to your website, where they come from, how they navigate your site, which pages they land on and how long they stay. Even if you’re not going to look at the data right now – sign up and start compiling the data. Just go to http://google.com/analytics

Ever wonder why images or photographs sometimes appear next to people’s comments on blogs?  Those images are called avatars, and it is really easy to create an avatar image for yourself. You, too, can have a photograph or icon that will follow your comments around the internet.

Why would you want to do that? For branding, and to call attention to your comments. You don’t need to use a portrait. You could use your logo, for example.

Below, I am going to walk you through, step by step, how to create your custom avatar image using gravatar.com.

1. The first thing to do is to have an image on your computer that you want to use. I used a photograph taken of me by Lynn Christoffers – a Martha’s Vineyard Photographer.It doesn’t have to be square. Gravatar will let you crop it once you upload it.
   
2. Step two: Go to http://www.gravatar.com
3. Step 3: Click on the “Sign up now” link. (view image below)

4. Step 4: Enter the email address that you want your avatar image associated with. (see image below)
5. Step 5: They will send you a confirmation email.
   Click on the link in the confirmation email to activate your account. (see images below)
   

   

6. You will then be directed to a page that will ask you where the image is that you want to upload.

7. Choose where it is. Search for the image and upload it.

8. You will then be able to crop it to be the perfect avatar image.

   

9. When you’re done cropping, you will be asked to rate it based on the image content.

10. The final step is to assign the image to your email address. Just check the box next to the email address that you want to associate with the avatar, and click on the “use for selected address” button. Then you’re done. It is that easy.
    

You can log into gravatar at any time to update your avatar images or add new email addresses.

• Adobe Photoshop Elements for Windows – My image editing tutorial use adobe photoshop elements. This is a relatively inexpensive software that allows you to prepare images for the web. It is a paired down version of Adobe Photoshop (which costs over $600) adobe photoshop elements runs around $80 depending where you purchase it.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac – My image editing tutorial use adobe photoshop elements. This is a relatively inexpensive software that allows you to prepare images for the web. It is a paired down version of Adobe Photoshop (which costs over $600) adobe photoshop elements runs arounc $80 depending where you purchase it, and is cross platform.
• Resizing and Cropping Images – This tutorial walks you through how to resize and crop images in adobe photoshop elements – to prepare them for your content management interface.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Selecting and changing line images – This tutorial shows you how to remove a line image from its background in Photoshop Elements. This is useful if you have a line drawing or signature that you want to upload to your website and have it match your website’s color.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Preparing Graphics for the web – An article with tips on preparing your graphics for the web. It addresses the issue of why photographs uploaded to the web might appear less vibrant than on your computer, how to compose portraits and tips on taking product shots.
• Quick color correction using levels – Do your photos need a little color enhancement before you post them to the web? Here is a quick tutorial on how to easily polish up those images, bringing up or down the lights, the darks and adjusting colors.
  Click here to view the embedded video.
• Cutting the background away from an image – This Tutorial takes you through removing the background from an image in photoshop elements, leaving you with the object in the image surrounded by a transparent field.
  Click here to view the embedded video.

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I am always fired up when I learn about a new tool, and slideshowpro is really exciting. I immediately purchased it so that I could play with it.

I purchased the slideshowpro for flash ($39), and the CMS slideshowpro director ($39). My server will work with slideshowpro director, if any of my clients are interested, however, if you are going to be making tons of video slide shows, I recommend the slideshowpro hosting for the CMS, because you won’t have to worry about bandwidth, and it is really reasonable.

1. Step one in getting slideshowpro up and running on my wordpress blog was to install the director on my website server. This was pretty straight forward.  You ftp the files to the server, and then browse to them. The installation process through the web browser walks  you through any permissions that you need to update. It will prompt you to manually create a .xml file called crossdomain.xml, it will tell you exactly what to copy and paste into that file,  and upload that to your root directory, which I did with bbedit.
2. Step two was to create an album in the director and upload photos to it. I uploaded pictures from a walk I took on a landbank trail in Chilmark, just two days ago. I then copied the path generated to that albums .xml file to paste into the flash file parameters.
3. Step three was to install the slideshowpro extension into my flash cs3 and then create a new flash file.
4. Step four was to plug in the path to the album’s .xml file generated by the album, and also to choose that the .xml file is a director generated file, publish the .swf file and ftp it to my server.
5. Step five was to install the plug-in Kimili flash embed tag generator into my wordpress blog, and click on its icon to add the new .swf files path, size etc.   I made sure to add the base=”.” parameter to the embed tag. I found the instructions here.
6. The results of my efforts are at the top of the page.

I am pretty excited to learn more about the slideshowpro customization and parameters.

I want  my clients to have the benefits of blogging, so I am learning everything that I can about it. I have set up my blog with the Thesis theme, and have learned how to customize the theme with “hooks”, custom functions and custom styles. I have purchased a developers license with Thesis so that I can create blogs for my clients using the Thesis theme. I have also added a small upgrade to my RS3 package (of just an additional 3.50/month) to add a blog to your site. I am ready to help you get started.

Click here to sign up for my RS3-blog hosting, just 19.50/month (exclusive for goffgrafix.com clients)

Already have an RS3 hosting account with me? click here to upgrade to RS3-blog hosting, just an additional 3.50/month.

One of my friends is spending this holiday traveling with her family. When she takes photographs of their vacation, she posts them the same day, and it is great to be able to share their journey visually.

I initially started my facebook page for business networking, so I use it mostly to talk about what projects I am working on. It is starting to transform a little bit into a more personal space, as I reply to my friends listings, but I am still very aware that I started the page to leverage my business, and not just to socialize.

I encourage everybody to join facebook. However, it is very important to decide what you are going to use facebook for – for socializing with your friends, for business networking, for promotion of a band or venue. The reason being that how you write and what you share can impact your professional life if prospective employers or clients (or friends of prospective employers and/or clients) read your posts. The impact can be positive, or negative, depending upon what you’ve written.

One of my colleagues just started a facebook page, and her husband cautioned her not to show her age. In this competitive job market, would she be discriminated against if prospective employers knew she was over 50? Maybe. If someone has repeated posts of a certain political slant – would that alienate prospective clients? Maybe.

Do you want to network with only your closest friends? or do you want to network with friends and business colleagues? You can set your privacy settings so that only people you have “friended” can see your posts, and so who you decide to accept as friends can dictate the type of information that you post. Still, don’t forget that whatever you post on the internet is public. What you write on a friend’s wall, their friend’s can view. A good motto is: if you don’t want the world to know it, don’t post it.

That said, I have to repeat, that I love facebook. I love reading about what my friends and colleagues are doing, and feeling connected to a larger community. It makes the four walls of my home-office-cubicle transparent, and I can visualize a whole world unfolding beyond them.

Do you use facebook? Have you ever read anything posted that would make you think twice about hiring or working with someone? Have you ever posted something that you immediately wished you could “unpost”?

Now you can just ask people for their email and name. You could say, “Hey, can you give me your email address and name so that I can try to sell you my stuff through personalized emails?” That would be the most honest approach, don’t you think?

Maybe you aren’t just trying to sell people your services and products. Maybe you are completely altruistic and just want to give away great advice and tips. Maybe you have truly useful information to share with them. Then you can say, “Sign up to receive my useful tips and advice”, and that way you might get people interested in your tips and advice signing up, because you are giving them something that they consider valuable.

When people give you their name and address, they are giving you something of value. You need to give something back. Don’t solicit emails from people unless you have something of value to share. And make sure it is valuable. Be it a free e-book if they sign up, or useful advice, or a promise of the information that they are looking for, make sure that you are giving something of value. Otherwise people will unsubscribe faster than they signed up, and you are just adding to the obesity of our spam layer.

Back to Speaker A, she said that when you send out your emails to this growing list they should be 75% content and 25% sales. I disagree. I think that if you send emails out to a list of people they should be 90% valuable content and 10% sales. In fact, I don’t think you should ever send an email unless you are offering value. I do believe that email lists are important, however, unless you have something of value to offer your list in addition to advertising, I want to discourage you from sending emails. My point of view might not be the most marketing savvy opinion, however, as someone bombarded with hundreds of email every day, I would urge you to not add to the empty calories. I want nutritious email landing in my inbox. I want them to feed my intellect, or my curiosity, or my spirit. I don’t want the internet to be a huge commercial. I want to believe that the internet is a vehicle for communication and sharing ideas.

That said, I do enjoy an occasional notice from amazon.com about my favorite author – so how is that different? The key word, I think is “occasional”.

Speaker B asked Speaker A, “How often should you send out emails to your list?”. Speaker A said that in the past experts have suggested sending an email once a month, however, she urged, recent studies show that you should send an email every week. “you should be contacting them once a week .. be it with a newsletter or a tip … the reason is that people purchase for different reasons .. emotional … does no good to do it only once … you need to continually be staying in front of your list – broadcasting – it doesn’t have to be lengthy … send a benefit … tie it into current events … share a tip, then at the bottom of the email mention your information.”

Now, I have issue with this again. I recently attended the Social Media TeleSummit, and each of the speakers had a free gift for attendees that required filling in your name and email address (They ALL must be listening to these experts!) Caught up in a flush of enthusiasm about what I was learning, I naturally signed up for ALL. I was then bombarded, literally bombarded with email. The variety of the email that I received in response to my action of signing up for their gifts covered a range of useful to down right annoying. One speaker bombarded me almost daily with emails that were transparently just a framework to sell me. Other speakers have been sending me an email once a week, and although some of the content is useful, most of it is just a sales pitch. They might have ONE sentence that is good advice and then point me with an affiliate link to another class or teleseminar that is happening. ONE sentence. That is just plain lazy.

What I am trying to say is, if you are going to start broadcasting email to an email list, put time into it. Don’t cut corners. Give value. Don’t sell products with every email, unless you space them way out, (so people have a chance to forget they were annoyed by the balance of value content to sales in your last email. )

And no matter what Speaker A says. Please don’t send an email every week unless there is really time sensitive information that you need to communicate. If the emails are just a vehicle for a sales pitch, keep it to twice a month, or once a month. And no matter what you do, make sure you send emails that are well written and contain 90% value content. Don’t do it, unless you are willing to take the time to do it right. You expect your recipients to take the time to read them, after all. You should be willing to invest the time thinking about what you are sending.

Time, Money, Sex (and Salvation): How to Turbo Charge Your Blog Posts, Podcasts and Sales Copy for Maximum Traffic & Greater Impact with Andy Wibbels

(On a side note, Andy Wibbels is a very entertaining speaker, so if you ever have a change to listen to him – to a podcast, or to attend a teleseminar that he is participating in – I encourage you to do so.)

Andy Wibbels has a background in theater, and because of this he sees the world from a narrative perspective. He sees the act of shopping as a giant screen play, and has spent years studying the characters involved and analyzing what motivates them.

Wibbels started by saying that we tend to focus on “why should people buy from me” from the perspective of ourselves – because they like me, because I’m credible, because of my reputation. That may be true, but in order to successfully market, he says that we need to understand the underlying motivation behind their purchases – we need to see into the DNA of their psyche. Shoppers won’t buy from us only because they like us, they will buy from us because something in their emotional psyche is urging them to buy our product, and that that underlying urge is wrapped up in self preservation.

Andy Wibbels pointed out that we buy things (and he is not talking about essentials, like eggs and milk and toilet paper, he is talking about the extras) – we buy based on emotions and then justify it.

Andy asks us to look at the stories around us, and at how things come out in a narrative structure. In every a story, movie, play or poem, he points out that characters act when their self preservation is threatened. “Every movie, play, story or product is about the end of the world. ”

According to Wibbels, you can translate that to the marketing world. If we have a perceived threat to the trajectory of our lives or our livelihood, if we, as consumers, feel threatened, then we act – AND to do so we must see the product or the service that we a compelled to buy as the savior, the grail, the salvation. The product must be perceived as the life raft.

To better illustrate his philosophy, Andy Wibbels had us draw a Venn diagram.

Andy specifies that these are the main reasons why we buy things beyond our daily needs – (not toilet paper, oatmeal, cat litter).

TIME
We want to save time – to use our time more wisely. Everybody is so busy, no one has time to do anything.

How does your product or service help people use their time more wisely? Does it free up time for them to do what they would rather do?

MONEY
Everybody is broke.

How can your product, service, ebook, teleseminar, phone call, magazine help people make money, make more money, or have them use their money more wisely

SEX
Wibbels points out that our advertising is “soaked in sex, wreathed in sensuality and bathed in lust”. He said that (and I paraphrase some of this) “Sex is one of the main reasons why we buy things … not talking about getting on – rather how does your product or service make people more attractive so that they can have more sex? How does it help people have more sex, better sex, more partners, better performance, more offers for sex. The idea not just of sex as ‘get it on’, ‘get it together’, but performance and yourself as an attractive person”…
“to a business this translates to: search engine ranking, brand, visibility, how your business is perceived – your means, your products, – the best description of social software is software that gets you laid.”

Andy Wibbels’s VENN diagram maps out an easy way to talk about your products and services. This is a quick way to cook down what you do, and put your job description to 3 points.

1. How do your products/services save time
2. How do your products/services save money
3. How do your products/services increase sex appeal, the attractiveness of your brand and visibility

According to Wibbels, people are driven by emotional needs which are tied to our self preservation – “our need to spread our genes and our means.” You can answer their emotional reaction, justifying this NEED to buy with data: (your products saves time, money and increase a business’s sex appeal).

CONTROL
At the center of Wibbels diagram is control.

“Who wants to be out of control?”, he asks, ” Nobody! We all want control … every theme in every movie, song or play is about control”.

Ask yourself, how do your products and services help people take that control.
YOUR MARKETING SCRIPT

We must write our marketing material as if we were writing a screen play, (or a one act skit). We have analyzed why our hero is in pain and in need of help. We have scripted how our products and services can save the day!

In writing this marketing script, Wibbels advises us to make sure we illustrate tangible benefits of the product or service that we are selling. We need to be direct and exacting, to point out specific benefits that people (our hero) can latch on to. Do not talk generalities, he says, we are talking about the pain/discomfort that people are experiencing in their lives, and how our services can help.

SALVATION

Wibbels has an addition to his diagram. Off to the side, there is another reason why people do things – a dotted line not connected to the main circles. And that reason is salvation – some people do do what they do for salvation, divinity, to connect with a divine inside themselves…
Salvation, he said, is less about control and more about connection.

TO SUM IT UP
That is why we buy: time, money, sex, control, salvation

Putting a video on your website is a great way to form a personal connection with your website’s visitors and with your clients. And so, to practice what I preach, I have decided to experiment with different media so that I can teach you what I learn. With the content management systems that I have programmed for you all, adding a video to your website can be very easy and inexpensive – even free, if you already have a webcam.

For my first adventure into video recording, I purchased an inexpensive webcam from <a href=”http://logitech.com” title=”Logitech.com” target=”_blank”>http://logitech.com</a>. This is a devise that plugs into the USB port of my computer. Now, when I launch my ichat program (I am on a mac), there is a little camera icon as opposed to a phone icon, and if I click on that camera icon,  on my computer screen, I can view what the camera is pointing to. You can use a webcam with skype and <a href=”http://dashboard.aim.com/aim”>aim</a> as well. This logitech cam does not integrate with my iMovie software, however, it probably would integrate with movie editing software on a windows machine.

My webcam is perched on the top of my computer and is pointing at me. This was a bit of a shock at first, to tell you the truth. Working from a home office, I had become accustomed to being hidden, reclusive. How many of us who work at home, stumble from bed to our computers and check our email before even brushing our teeth in the morning? and before you know it, you are busy working away in your pajamas.  Using a webcam invites people into your private space. Now, all of you can see through this window on my computer, that my home office  is  cluttered, and that I work in an environment of creative chaos.

If you want a more formal and professional video presentation for your webpage, I suggest that you put some sort of screen or blank wall behind yourself.  However, a webcam is an informal tool at best.

I purchased a software from <a href=”http://ecamm.com” target=”_blank”>http://ecamm.com</a> that records video conferencing, and I used that to record myself talking. I also experimented with using <a href=”http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/” target=”_blank”>SnapZ Pro X software</a> which can record my desktop. On a windows machine, I could use <a href=”http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp” target=”_blank”>Camtasia Studio</a> to record the video conference.

I did some quick editing of the recording in iMovie HD, and then uploaded it to google. If you are on a windows machine, you can edit with windows movie maker, a free software. Once uploaded, google generated the code that I needed to embed the video into my website.

This is a really easy way to make an informal video to put on your website.

Keep in mind that any video that you upload to google or youtube.com is going to be distributed throughout the internet – so use that to your advantage. Put your website address on your video. Introduce yourself and your services. Having your videos in the public domain can be a form of grass roots marketing, if done correctly.