A group called Invisible Children produced a 30 minute video called ‘Kony 2012’ to raise awareness about Joseph Kony, a Ugandan rebel who has been committing war crimes for the better part of two decades. The video took only 6 days to reach 100,000,000 views, which makes it the most viral video in history.

According to a blog post by Visable Measures, the Kony 2012 video even outpaced such Youtube video stars as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. See the breakdown here:

So what made people so willing to share this video with everyone they knew? What did the folks over at Invisible Children do to make sure this video reached pretty much everyone?

Kony 2012 Kept It Simple

The video does a good job of making a very complicated issue seem incredibly simple. In just 30 minutes they managed to tell the back story, explain the tragedy caused by Joseph Kony, and explain why it matters and what can be done to help.

The simplicity of the video has also been a point of contention amongst the videos critics. Many claim that the video actually over simplified the issue and didn’t tell the entire story.

The fact remains however that the video was effective. Sharing media has never been easier, and the people sharing it have never been more capable and willing to do so.

The true genius of the Kony 2012 video is that they knew exactly who they were targeting, and made the video as compelling as possible to that target group. In a world that is ever increasingly dominated by online interactions, Kony 2012 was able to take that world by storm in less a week.

The trending topic in the sports world this week has been the firing of NFL quarterback Peyton Manning. After 4 MVP awards, 2 Super bowl appearances, and 14 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts an agreement for a contract negotiation could not be made and thus resulted in the free agency of the star quarterback. Manning has been a fan-favorite and the image of the Colts for years now and many followers expressed their concern and love for Manning through social media.

Twitter Followers React

Within an hour of the announcement of Manning’s release from the Colts, Peyton Manning’s name had been mentioned in tweets 48,147 times.  Out of those, according to Fizzology, a twitter post analyzer, 52% of those tweets expressed anger at the firing of Manning, 27% felt negatively about the decision, and 21% mentioned the poor character of the Indianopolis Colts’ team owner Jim Isray for letting the franchise icon go.

While the official press conference, which turned extremely emotional for Peyton Manning and fans, simmered down some of the anger from Colts fans and NFL followers, angry tweets have continued since last week’s announcement.  Many predict that distaste will continue to breed between the franchise and its fans.

Prospective Peyton

The big question now is, where does Peyton end up next year?  According to post-presser Twitter stats, Manning will either be wearing a New York Jets jersey or maybe even a Miami Dolphins uniform.  As much as social media attempts to predict this stars future, only time will tell.

Without someone to guide you however, stepping into the world of search engine marketing can feel a lot like entering a lions den…with a juicy steak strapped to your hip. It’s easy to quickly become overwhelmed by the wealth of options available to you.

The fact remains though that pay per click advertising is a force too great to simply ignore. So whether you are a seasoned veteran or a rookie in the PPC game, it helps to think about things from the perspective of your target.

The all important question you need to ask yourself before starting a campaign is this: What are you trying to get your target to do? Any good PPC strategy needs to revolve around the same 3 basic keys to success.

One: Get Them to See Your Ad

This is all about choosing the right keywords. Remember to make them specific and make them relevant. Figure out your budget and plan your keyword strategy accordingly.

A smaller budget might benefit most from a series of highly targeted exact phrases. Leaving things too broad might get you more traffic, but you also run the danger of devouring your daily budget.

Two: Get Them to Click On Your Ad

It doesn’t matter how many impressions you get if no one ever clicks on your ad. Assuming you have a sound keyword strategy in place, the next step is to create dynamic ad copy.

Write your ads so they stand out. Do a little research and see what your competitors are doing in their ad copy. Find out what you can do to make your business look better than theirs in less than 70 characters.

Three: Get Them to Convert On Your Site

This is where the rubber meets the road. If everyone that lands on your site just bounces away, you haven’t really accomplished anything at all.

Make sure your landing page and keywords are relevant to each other and there is a clear call to action in place. Remember that clicks aren’t what you’re really after here; its conversions. Clicks cost you money, conversions should make it back.

PPC has the power to become your businesses best friend. The trick is to make sure you take the time to develop a winning strategy from start to finish. While only a small part of the puzzle, these three keys can serve as a solid starting point for any campaign.

One celebrity who took full advantage of the red carpet spotlight was Sacha Baron Cohen, who showed up to the awards show dressed fully in character for his upcoming movie “The Dictator”. In a sea of celebrities, Baron Cohen found a way to make himself stand out.

At one point on the red carpet Baron Cohen even dumped a can of fake ashes out onto the tux of American Idol star Ryan Seacrest. When he did this Baron Cohen made more than a ridiculous scene: he made a viral video.

What does it mean to go “viral”?

Any video that gains widespread popularity over a short period of time is considered to be “viral”. It can be a powerful marketing technique if you can manage the creativity required to create such a buzzworthy moment.

Think of your favorite youtube videos. The ones you’ve watched several times and shared with your friends. Chances are the video you’re thinking of can be considered as viral.

Why does viral matter?

What makes viral marketing so effective is that it doesn’t require a monetary investment to get people to see it. It’s the people themselves that do the spreading and the more popular it gets the more impressions you get for your message.

For instance the video of Sacha Baron Cohen dumping ashes on the red carpet has been shared thousands of times since last night. Whether they know it or not, every single person that sees that video is now watching a small commercial for Baron Cohens new movie.

While his specific stunt might not be considered classy, it certainly was effective.

The catch with viral marketing.

The big problem with viral videos is that it’s hard to predict what content is capable of gaining mass popularity. This is especially true for a relatively small or unknown company.

So while it’s almost impossible to count on a certain piece of content going viral, the results of it doing so can be invaluable.

What are your favorite viral videos? What makes your more willing to share a video with others?

One year ago, February 24^th 2011, Google released its newest algorithm and fiercest defense against low quality content from its search results.  This defense would become known as the Panda Update and has forever changed the way sites focus their search engine optimization goals.

While Panda was actually named after Google’s employee who developed the update, this update truly is the Kung-Fu-Panda of duplicate content and will destroy page ranking of a site that lacks high quality. Here’s a look at what Panda has been through since its birth a year ago…

With all the resources available, doing an online business is now easier and more affordable than ever. So easy, kids are doing it.

As a kid I was fortunate enough to live in a place where I could make money in the traditional ways of raking leaves, shoveling driveways, walking dogs, lemonade stands and paper routes.  However, not all kids live somewhere where these things are realistic.

So how can these kids earn money and learn some work ethic? Now days, any kid with internet access, and the willingness to learn and work, can make money.  (With adult supervision of course).

Here are some ways kids are make money online:

(Mommy bloggers, you may want to take notes to see how you can monetize your blog as well.)

• Make products (crafts, etc.) and sell them online
• Sell downloadable digital products (through affiliate links)
• Music/song download sites
• Online books (audiobooks)
• Software (kids computer games, etc.)
• Sell other physical products through affiliate links
• Product Reviews (uploaded to YouTube, directing traffic to their website)
• Google AdSense (included on the website)

The safest and most popular for kids are the affiliate marketing links.  Many affiliate programs are free to join (ie. CJ, GAN, Clickbank, etc.) and allow you to offer numerous products.  (Tip: The account will need to be set up under someone 18 or older)

How does affiliate marketing work?

When someone goes to your website and clicks on the product, that takes the customer to the company site (The Space Store for example). When the customer purchases the product, you earn a commission. (Affiliate programs track the commissions and pay you).

You don’t have to worry about any of the customer service. There’s no talking to strangers, shipping orders, dealing with payment processing, etc. The company handles all of that.

A Great Summer Project and Educational Experience

So as you can see, a project like this can be a great summer time project vs watching TV all summer.  Even when school is in session, the great thing about an online business is they can do it around homework and other responsibilities.

Let’s remember some basic things we all should have learned at a very young age. Along with tying our shoes and picking up our toys, I’m sure most parents taught us how to be polite. Saying please, thank you, and you’re welcome are just as important now as they were back then. In short, manners still matter.

Snap back to the present. Our social media presence can be seen by almost anyone. If we are rude to others online, it stays there for anyone to see (including potential employers). How we comport ourselves online can say a lot to someone looking to offer us a job.

Here are a few tips to help us keep things cordial on our favorite social networks:

The Golden Rule

Treat others how you want to be treated. It’s called the golden rule for a reason: it works. No one wants to be friends with a jerk. No one wants to work with a jerk. No one wants to hire a jerk.

The best way to receive fair treatment online is to treat others fairly yourself. Social media has a funny habit of putting our personalities under a microscope for the world to see. Make sure it’s your best qualities that are getting magnified.

Be Calm

We all know a guy who loses their temper online. Don’t be that guy. Even when something makes you mad online, it’s hard to sound intelligent during a rant.

When something gets you fired up online, just walk away and let it sit for a while. If nothing else this will give you time to organize your thoughts into a cohesive argument.

Think Before You Post

Remember who you’re friends with. Have you friended any co-workers? Maybe even a boss? Try to keep in mind that anything you post can probably be seen by those people you have to spend your days with at work.

If you’re about to post something you wouldn’t want your boss to see, at least take a moment to make sure your privacy settings are in order. Or better yet, think twice about posting that content in the first place.

None of these tips are meant to censor your freedom of speech in the online community. By all means you should be who you are and express yourself.

Just be mindful of who else might be watching. Your manners might matter more than you think.

In a world of millions of websites and billions of Google searches, even the coolest products and sites are hidden in the masses.  Sometimes it feels like you will never be found.  While a concentrated and continuous effort of SEO can increase your chances of being discovered, there are also a couple of quick things you can do to jump up in the rankings. While this information may seem obvious to seasoned SEO’s, it should serve as a subtle reminder about 3 simple search engine optimization tasks that can greatly increase your chances of being seen.

Robots.txt

While most of your content may seem unique and fresh to you, search engine bots only spend fractions of a second reading and indexing your entire site.  A robots.txt file guides the bots through your site, informing them what should be indexed, what should be skipped, and what content is most valuable.  If you have a robots.txt file on your site, you may be surprised to discover that pages, images, and folders are being withheld from search engines.  While the robots.txt file is essential and helpful in search engine optimization, it can prove harmful if it disallows valuable pages from being indexed. There are many SEO tools that will make it easy to fix these crawling issues and provide more accurate indexing, expectantly bringing more people to your site.

301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a process of forwarding one URL to a different URL for both users and search engines.  Google and other search engines are looking for sites with unique content and “bait” that drives people to use their search engine. If your site is crawled as www.leadgenix.com and leadgenix.com your content is being read twice and is therefore less unique. Not only this, but your site is now receiving page rank for two individual landing pages.  A simple correction would be coding a 301 redirect so the leadgenix.com URL automatically forwards the user to www.leadgenix.com URL. This process is extremely simple and can dramatically increase your site attention.

Verify Google and Bing Local Listings

Over the past year, search engines have become increasingly more localized in their search results.  As users become more localized in their searches, Google and Bing want to make sure users of their search engines are finding real businesses with real addresses.  While this process of verifying your actual location doesn’t take a lot of time, it can be extremely detrimental to your rankings if no physical address is verified.  Spend the few minutes it takes on the phone with a local listing specialist and almost immediately increase your local rankings.

Overall, these 3 steps shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes for someone who is familiar with search engine optimization.  While they are simple tasks, they can dramatically increase the power of your website in the eyes of the search engine bots, and will surely be worth your time. It’s time to stop hiding in the masses.

Have you ever thought of starting your own mommy blog? Do you have one, but don’t know how to get more visitors? Already have visitors and want to make some money? We address all of those issues and have a great step-by-step process to make sure your mommy blog gets the attention it deserves.

Try it Out for Free

So you’ve got a great idea or hobby that you’d love to share with the world, but where should you start? There are plenty of free online services that will let you start your blog for free. Here is a list of our favorites:

• WordPress
• Blogger
• Tumblr
• Hubpages
• Squidoo

When you’re first starting out, use a free service for six months or so to see how it goes. Try to post at least once a week, but two to five times a week is even better. If you find that posting is no problem and you hit your six month mark, you should probably move on to the next step towards mommy blog stardom.

Create a Professional Website

Professional-looking websites help your company look as big as you want it to be. You could be writing on your blog an hour a day from home or have 1,000 employees doing creative research for each post and no one would know the difference–if your site looks professional. The only outward facing part of your company is your website, so make sure that it looks top notch. (Side note: top notch does NOT mean boring – be as creative as you want, but it does need to look professional.)

Professional websites also help people feel comfortable with sharing the site with friends, family, co-workers etc… which helps you get more and more potential readers/customers.

Get More Traffic to Your Blog

There are numerous ways to get more traffic to your blog; you just have to find the ways that work for you. Here are a few examples to get more traffic to your blog:

1. SEO
• Stands for Search Engine Optimization, which helps you to rank higher on the Google search page
2. Frequent Posts
• The more posts you have, the more traffic you’ll receive.
• Be consistent. Post at the same time every morning or have a theme for every Friday post.
3. Use Social Media
• Create a Facebook page, share your stuff on Twitter, create Youtube videos, etc…
4. Guest Blog Posting
• Find similar bloggers and work together. Post on their blogs, have them post on yours. Expand your reader base by writing to a new blogger’s readers.
5. Submit Your Blog in Contests
• There are often contests on the web for the best blog in specific industries. Search the web and see if you can enter. The winners usually get great new readers/customers and some sort of prize.
6. Online Paid Advertising
• Use the Google PPC network. Often you can get your first $100 free if you look online for a code.
• Use Facebook ads. If your target reader is a mother in her 40’s, Facebook ads will only show your ads to mothers in their 40’s. You don’t have to pay for non-relevant traffic.

The list could go on for pages; there are always more ways to get traffic to your site. Be creative and think outside of the box to get more people to your site. If you want more ideas, simply give us a call at 1.888.579.6803.

Knowing How Much Traffic is Enough

It seems like the first questions someone asks about monetizing their blog is “How much traffic is enough traffic?” The answer nobody wants to hear is exactly what I’m going to give – it depends. So, let me explain a little further. It all depends on how much money you want to make. Here’s how you can calculate how much traffic you need:

Let’s assume you want to make $100 a day, not a bad income ($36,500 a year for your blog). If you are selling a product from your blog, you should guess that you’ll receive around a 2% conversion rate (the percentage of visitors that visit your site who actually buy a product). If your product makes you $20 in profit, then you would need approximately 250 visitors per day to make $100 each day from your site. 100 = .02 x visitors x $profit, which means that visitors = 250 in this scenario.

If you’re making your money from advertising, then you follow a similar equation. Simply figure out how much money you make from “X” amount of visitors, and then figure out how many visitors it takes to make your desired amount of money.

Contact Advertisers

You can put ads on your blog from day one. Google Adwords is a wonderful program that is easy to use and will help make you money from the very start. You just sign up, get approved, and they’ll send you a specific code to put the ads on your site. After that, you get paid each time someone clicks on the ads.

WARNING: Do not click on ads on your own site or have friends and family do this as well. This is against their rules and regulations policy and will get you banned from their ad platform for life.

After you are getting more and more traffic to your site, there are a few better ways to work with advertisers to make you money. Reach out to niche websites and companies that have products relating to your blog and see if they want ads on your site. Make sure that you show them how many visitors you’re getting and how much time they spend on your site. With this information, it shouldn’t be hard to get a few advertisers to purchase some space on your site. They may even pay you more than Google Adwords will earn for your site.

Best of Luck!

We wish you the best in your mommy blogging adventures and would to help out in any way we can. Fill out the form in the top right corner if you need any help!