New to this site? We’d love for you to check out our book: Six Biggest Mistakes.

Photo by simpologist, used with Creative Commons license

The payoff of your online efforts is proportional to the amount of effort that goes into it.

Spend an hour working on your link-building, and get a few people to visit your site. Spend some spare time on launching a business – and get that sort of spare-time quality traffic.

And so on, and so forth.

No Shortcuts to Online Success

Here’s a for-instance: Let’s say you’re launching a blog called “New Frugality.” It’s not an overnight success, because it takes real time. Time for you to build relationships, time for you to get real quality content, time for you to carve out your niche.

We’re in our Fourth Month over at New Frugality HQ. And it’s taking some time to get over the hump – as expected.

But here’s the thing: we’re actually in this for the long haul.

The Tactics to Definitely Avoid

If you’re new to the online space – or you’re a veteran marketer but are just now getting into blogging – you can easily get sucked in to some shortcuts that are disguised as strategic moves. They’re actually just tactics that are kinda lame – and will end up giving you headaches as you build your online empire. And here are a couple:

1. The “Can I Guest Post?” Email

These can be great – and you need a healthy reliance on guest posting (as you will read in this awesome “Noob Guide” on the SEOMoz site). But we have had a few requests over at New Frugality that gave us some serious pause.

Quoting an email: “This is Jack…I went through your site while surfing in Google.com, am very much impressed with your site’s unique informations.”

AVOID.

We HAVE had some great guest posts on that site – but they came to us from legitimate people with legitimate social presence. (Hint: they had last names.)

2. The “Same Stuff, Different Site” Post

We have watched a couple bloggers of note make this mistake – and they may NOT be paying attention to words like “Panda” or “Penguin.”

“Penguin” is Google’s Algorithm Update. This controls search like nobody’s business. And this can affect your business like nobody’s business.

In brief, you can’t copy and paste content that you used on one site and put it on another site you own WITHOUT making changes to a good percentage of the text.  (Estimates we’ve heard: 70% of the content can be the same.)

3. The Over-Reliance on Facebook Likes

“Engagement” by big brands on Facebook – that means how many times stuff the big brands say gets shared, commented on, or has the like button clicked – is as high as 0.2% in the auto industry, according to this report by “All Facebook.” (This study looked at “daily page engagement.”)

Wait. WHAT?

Ford is considered the industry standard for its social media presence – and they have 1,400,000 fans on Facebook. They should expect 4,200 of those fans to be engaged each day. A tiny number.

This isn’t to say that 4,200 is a BAD number for Ford.

But for you…that percentage of engagement multiplied by your number of Facebook fans (or people who click the like button) isn’t going to give you much. And the amount of time to get those fans – well, your efforts might be better spent elsewhere. Now, the last thing to avoid:

4. Posting Stuff That Isn’t Good

Chris Brogan had a great piece on this the other day – though we think the title of the post doesn’t match the content.

Upshot? Write Good Stuff.

Not everyone is an awesome writer – we get that. But that doesn’t mean that crap needs to be put on the page just to have the page filled. You’re not running a daily newspaper here – if you don’t have something good, productive, well-thought out, clever or (here’s that word again) “engaging,” don’t publish it.

Real Work – Online AND Off – Takes Time.

Last week, we were all over Amazon. This week, we’re launching not one…not two…but three different EBooks.

We love our Act Now button

We’ve thought of ourselves here at Area 224 Headquarters as something in-between. Not really an Internet Marketing shop. Not totally a Corporate Communications firm, either.

But, being in the middle of both things is pretty cool, we think – we’ve been able to watch how both sides try to tackle communications issues large and small. And we’ve tried to share that knowledge with you.

Which is Why This is EBook Week

First up: The Communicator’s Guide to Affiliate Marketing. This book is written for you if…

• You’re in a Communications role – maybe an in-house marketing person, maybe a writer on your own, maybe someone who spins words into phrases for a living. OR
• You’re a small business person – and you’re looking to augment your income by getting into the Affiliate Marketing world. OR
• You’re in ANY sort of gig – and you’ve heard about Affiliate Marketing – but you’re not convinced it’s right for you. Or you don’t know where or how to get started.

New Here? Why not download a free book. Social Media for First Graders.

Yes, I did it. I was at a lunch meeting and, at the tail end, I gave the other party a business card. A card that looked something like this one:

We sorta instagrammed it, for effect

Now, with the advancement of technology, with mobile phones and iPads and apps and the like, you’d think that the business card would be dead. But it’s not.

In fact, the business card exchange takes very little time – and there isn’t that dance macabre of whether or not you know the person (LinkedIn request?), whether or not you have met the person ever (Facebook request?), or whether or not you’re about to get spammed (the opt-in email address confirmation thing – more on that in a few).

So, since you asked, here are official tips that you can put to use with those most trusty of networking tools: business cards.

1. Don’t Scrimp on Paper

I’m going to assume for a half-second that your business cards are under your control – if you work for a mid-sized company or a big brand, standards are decided on by an Ivory Tower somewhere. Let’s hope those folks aren’t stingy with the paper stock.

Your business card’s paper stock is one of the most important decisions you can make.

Go thick. Go glossy. 14 point is the minimum. Mine are 16.  The extra couple points (or millimeters of thickness) plus the glossy finish make a serious impact.

2. Design is Important as Heck

Hire a professional. Heck, go to fiverr.com and get someone to design one. I don’t care how you get it done; but, unless you are someone with a knack for graphic design, outsource this key function.

The back of the card is important to use, too. Go with one of a couple approaches:

• Logo with links on a color background
• Your logo – but again with color
• OR space to write on.

You can write on the back

3. While You’re at it: No Dumb Titles

Thankfully, the bulk of the business cards sitting on my desk do not use dumb titles.

But there are a couple. “Chief Awesomeness Officer,” “Marketing Guru,” and “Master of Innovation and Vision” are some examples of what you want to avoid.

My card does not have a title on it – which is a great way to avoid having to reprint when you (a) promote yourself, (b) demote yourself or (c) get direct feedback from someone telling you that your title is dumb. (Consider this a warning: I have witnessed people delivering this news to someone. I have more tact than that: I use a blog.)

4. Handing You My Card Does Not Give You Permission to Spam Me

Start with a direct email, please. “Hey, Dave, great meeting you last night. We do a newsletter from time to time, and I’d love to put you on the list. Is that okay?”

You can even ask while you’re getting my card from me; if I give you permission, write that on the back of the card, along with the date.

Hey, it’s a Marketing and Networking Jungle out there. Try these tips with your business card. Trust me, you’ll make a positive impact. OR avoid a negative impact.

Hi. If you’re new here, be sure to learn more about our FORWARD:MARCH program, with private coaching starting March 1 and webinars kicking in on March 6.

We have often said that the work we do here at Area 224 – and the 12 Minute Marketing program we launched last year – has been at the intersection of Internet Marketing and Social Media Marketing.

Guess which camp we think Pinterest is in?

But what do we mean by that?

Good question…and, even though we see some real differences between the two – in approach, in positioning, and in numbers – we think both sides can learn lots from each other. Here are some key learnings:

Internet Marketing is All About Numbers.

Social Media Marketing – while getting better at it – is more of a “soft science.” Here’s what we mean:

Uber-Marketer Frank Kern has talked quite a bit about specific programs he has done – and he has opened the kimono and shared the nitty-gritty numbers. Like this:

• 10,000 emails sent
• 27% open rate
• 97 sales
• $1397 per sale

The ROI here is unclear – we don’t know how much was invested in all facets of this campaign, but we can tell you this: Internet Marketing focuses on Sales Numbers.

To take it a step further, there’s a guy named Ryan Deiss – also someone who falls into the “Uber-Marketer” camp – who has often said that he zeros in on one absolute number before deciding whether or not to get involved in someone’s product launch:

Earnings Per Click. (Or, if 100 people click on a landing page, and 5 of them order a $49 product, take 5, multiply it by $49 and you get $245; divide that by 100 and you come up with $2.45 per click.)

Meanwhile, Social Media Marketing is Less Mature about Bottom Line Impact

Very simply put, if we have to explain any of the above concepts to you, you are probably NOT an Internet Marketer. You might be a Social Media Marketer.

OR, at the risk of being even more direct, you might just be “in Social Media.”

This is one area where big brands and big agencies have failed in the past: they’ll hire based on soft numbers that might be rather suspect. 5000 Facebook friends (the limit). 25,000 Twitter followers (many of whom may well be bots).

And, to expect “Social Media” to translate immediately into “Social Media Marketing,” you MUST have an Objective.

Gone are the days (and these were a couple years ago, mind you) where brands can say “get me on Twitter” or “get me a Facebook fan page” and have that translate into some definition of success.

Campaigns and Landing Pages are more the domain of Internet Marketing

Yes, I said it out loud: Social Media Practitioners – the experts, gurus, ninjas and rock stars you have heard so much about – these folks tend to NOT be very good at running a campaign that goes beyond really soft sciences like “engagement.” You’re possibly going to hear terms like “number of Retweets” and “number of Facebook Fans” – but, from the Social Media folk, you will not hear anything that makes the ears of the sales people ring.

“We drove 1000 people to the landing page, and 125 of them filled out a form. All of them received a white paper from our firm; we were able to reach 15 of them by phone in the first week after the white paper arrived. We have appointments with 5 of them to talk about their business needs.”

A hypothetical quote…but which type of person produced it?

Internet Marketing is always wearing a Sales Hat

This might be the greatest difference between Social Media Marketing and Internet Marketing:

Internet Marketers always have a number attached to their name.

One reason yours truly got out of traditional PR back in the middle of the last decade: fighting for budgets and not being able to quantify the value you bring to an organization is TIRING stuff.

Our Point: if you’re in Social Media, think first like an Internet Marketer.

I received an email from a well-known figure – or, more accurately from the headquarters of a well-known figure – and it got me thinking about the RIGHT way to build a team.

The email started off on the right foot, sortof, with a subject line that said “Unacceptable Affiliate Advertising Methods.” We won’t tell you who it was from…so we’ll use the name “Joe Shlabotnik.”

It has been brought to my attention that some affiliates are using unacceptable advertising methods to promote my products.

The incident I’m referring to was when an Affiliate used a picture of a well known author along with a picture of his book in a PPC ad driving people to a training webinar with Mr. Shlabotnik.

Interestingly enough, I knew the exact thing to which Joe Shlabotnik was referring: an ad on Facebook from a week earlier. It looked a lot like this:

Did they ask him first?

It annoyed me at least a little – since I’m a big fan of Tim Ferriss, the author whose image was being used.

But what was even more interesting here was the chain of events leading to this email. In fact, it went something like this:

1. Dave sees PPC ad.
2. Dave signs up for webinar from advertiser.
3. Dave listens to first few minutes of webinar, throws up a little in his mouth when watching Joe Shlabotnik talk about his 14,000 square-foot house.
4. Dave exits the webinar, only to receive a few more emails from Shlabotnik Worldwide.
5. Dave opts out of future emails from Shlabotnik.

All this happened, mind you, before I got the scolding email from Joe Shlabotnik himself.

This, Gentle Readers, is no way to build a team.

What’s the takeaway here? A couple things:

1. Guard Your Brand Carefully

Joe Shlabotnik himself told us he created so many techniques that are being used by Internet Marketers that we’re probably using them right now and don’t even know it. So why does he need so many Affiliate Marketers to help make things happen for him?

In this case, he probably decided that he needed to “Funnel” us all through his marketing program, casting such a wide, uh, funnel that it was a pure numbers game. Get 1,000,000 eyeballs and even if you convert at a tiny tiny number (let’s say 0.1%) you still have 1000 paying customers.

But at what price? Did the guy or gal who was sending out the offensive emails really need them to draw eyeballs to a marketer so successful he practically invented Internet Marketing?

2. Choose Your Affiliates Carefully

We are in the middle of our Affiliate Recruitment campaign for 12 Minute Marketing right now, and I can tell you this: we are turning some people down. Once you get too big, you lose control of who is saying what about you – and that may have been the case with Mr. Shlabotnik.

Or, it may not matter to him – it may be more important to grow a big team and have no control over it. Don’t know, but that’s no the way we plan on doing it.

3. Have a Moral Compass

And use it. Whether or not this was authorized by Mr. Shlabotnik – and maybe it was – it’s definitely toeing the line.

In this case, using someone else’s image to sell your own product? Not cool.

What’s most interesting here?

Shlabotnik doesn’t need to use another author’s image to get ahead.

Learn from this, fellow marketers. Guard your brand carefully, Choose your affiliates carefully, and have a moral compass. Please.

The Legacy of Steve Jobs is without question. But the comeback from failure – lost in all of the discussion of product development success – is a book we can all take a page from.

When Steve Jobs passed away yesterday, the world mourned a titan of industry – and, when the San Francisco Chronicle’s article on Jobs’ life mentioned his name in the same sentence as “Ford, Edison and Disney,” well, you have no argument here.

Read the article from the Chronicle Here: SF Gate Link.

His successes were much ballyhooed, and rightly so; when people like President Obama and Mark Zuckerberg are mourning your loss, your legacy is safe.

Zuck Status Oct 5

NeXT

The NeXT Computer was a high-end workstation that, frankly, didn’t catch fire. At a cost of $6500, it was too expensive for a world that, in the late 80s and early 90s, didn’t have the concept of the office computer fully ingrained into the culture.

Didn't work like a charm

As a consumer product, it failed.

We’re all going to fail. It’s what comes next that’s important.

Jobs once said that “getting fired from Apple was the best thing that happened to me.” The firing led to the launch of NeXT, which, while not a commercial success, did have a good chunk of infrastructure that was trailblazing.  In fact, the intellectual property at NeXT was valuable enough to get the company bought by Apple Computers in 1996. (Another Wikipedia entry here.)

Turns out there wasn’t much of a market for the computer itself – 50,000 units were sold. But the operating system served as the precursor to Apple’s OS.

Failure Is an Option.

Failure to Learn From Failure Is NOT an Option.

We’re all going to get dealt cards in life. Businesses rise and fall. Promotions come and then the new boss comes in and they’re meaningless. Your startup will be groundbreaking but it won’t make you money.

You may not be as gifted and brilliant as Steve Jobs, you may not give a rip about computers or tech or iPhones or what have you.

Whether you sing on stage or sweep up after the performance, you’re going to screw up – and you’re going to get the chance to learn from the screwups.

Fail miserably then ask…

What’s NeXT For You?

Sponsored Hashtag

Ready to take your marketing viral? All you need is a tweet…

Actually, the Tweet is just the beginning. You probably need a few thousand other things.

Behold: Wendy’s, the American Burger Chain, launches new burgers today.

Here’s a video where Wendy herself explains the new burger.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2U4cR2c20s

Now, before you say “that’s cool” or “that’s lame” or “I don’t eat meat,” you probably need a little more background. Like what you’ll find in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oFxSKrMv5Q

If you weren’t alive way back when the very first Wendy’s “Where’s the Beef?” ad aired (January 10, 1984, starring Clara Peller), you probably think the guy in this commercial is just wearing an ironic throwback T-shirt of some sort. But it was huge, an amazing cultural meme (before the word “meme” really meant anything), and it gave rise to all sorts of pop culture awesomeness.

So…why NOT? Seriously, if you’re Wendy’s and you can bring a hefty dose of nostalgia, why wouldn’t you?

Photo by alanwhitaker, used with CC License

In fact, this campaign is borderline brilliant, and definitely meme-worthy, for a couple reasons.

1. “Engagement” at the point of purchase is what it’s all about. Right?

By resurrecting an old campaign and breathing new life into it, imagine the types of responses Wendy’s front-line employees will get at the store when someone buys this new, beefier burger.

“Here’s the beef!”

“You call this beefy?”

“Your tweets are dumb.”

The immediate ROI from this campaign isn’t going to be evident. You need to give this time – people need to try the new, beefier, jucier burgers before deciding to come back again. Or not.

But the engagement here is all about the discussion…at the point of purchase…about the actual product. Good use of dollars. But why else is this brilliant?

2. The “Where’s the Beef” Throwback doesn’t show the original commercial!

I’ve got to say that might be the coolest part of this campaign. You have to start looking for the ad on YouTube – the commercial with the young man wearing the shirt doesn’t show the Clara Peller commercial at all.

The old ad stands on its own merits – and the phrase became a catchphrase – so why grab the actual old commercial? Even more interesting when you visit reason 3:

3. The “I didn’t know that!” Factor.

Yes, Wendy’s was named after Dave Thomas’s daughter, Wendy. So they don’t revisit the old Clara Peller ad, but they do revisit the pig-tailed little Wendy ad – serving as a means of re-introducing Wendy, Dave’s daughter, AND the new burger. You’re bound to find something you didn’t know: There was an actual Wendy! She was Dave’s daughter! She’s now a spokesperson for Wendy’s!

Even if this is all just common knowledge, you actually have, in this marketer’s opinion, a BETTER throwback: to days where a guy starts a burger joint, names it after his daughter, and focuses in on quality food.

What can we learn here?

Time will tell if this is a breakthrough success, and if the “social” element of this campaign catches fire.

But, if you integrate with old content you have – “repurpose, repurpose, repurpose” – and you get “Holistic” with your social media (it’s not just one thing, it’s multi-faceted, etc.)…you have a chance at success.

You DO Have Something To Lose

I’m getting them again. Emails that grab me with subject lines that are misleading as heck. As a marketer, you’re better than that.

Let’s dissect a couple of these.

“You Have Nothing To Lose.”

That was the subject line of a recent email that begged me to take advantage of a coaching program with a guru. It costs me absolutely nothing to do – it is, in the style of the Internet Marketer, “FR.EE.” The calculus behind this, and other emails like it, is that I’m going to take a flier on your event, course, value-added service – and that I won’t think of my time as something I have to spend.

This is a problem. This is not an Empathy Marketing tactic. This is just lame.

See, I don’t know about you, but I choose to invest my time wisely. The reason I have nothing to lose, in your opinion, is because you know what’s on the other side of this offer, and it’ll only take an hour for me to find out.

If I ever fail to take your time seriously as a marketer, you can ignore my message.

What’s sad about this particular message I received is that the guy behind the curtain is probably someone I could learn from. But, because I got flummoxed by the email arrogantly telling me I had nothing to lose, I put the message into the mental circular file.

Let’s take a look at another one:

“Numbers Don’t Lie.”

Oh, don’t they? Peeling back the onion in this particular email and it’s even scarier. “9000 people visit this site every month!” “50 people have qualified for the bonus already!” I’ll agree: Numbers Don’t Lie.

The 9000 people who visited your site every month: are they bots from another country?

The 50 people who qualified for the bonus: what did they do to qualify?

Let’s amend the statement: Numbers Don’t Lie, but you can sure as heck use whatever numbers you want.

How About This? Let’s Take Each Other Seriously

My time is something I take seriously. 3 minutes reading your email from top to bottom are three minutes I’m not there for my wife and my kids.

Truth is something I take seriously, too. Mislead me with numbers that I can EASILY CHECK on the Internet and I’m going to lose respect for you.

We’re all trying to make a living. We’ve all got lives to lead. Take me seriously and I’ll do the same to you.

But Act on What?

We have seen the first deal from Groupin.pk. It. Is. Epic.

Background: Groupin.pk is not to be confused with Groupon. And, even if we have Groupon fatigue in the States, Pakistan is ready for their own Daily Deal Empire.

So we got the note today – after signing up what seems like ages ago and joining the ranks of the 75,000 or so who had signed up in the past 24 hours. (A figure they didn’t verify, but, in the interest of US-Pakistani relations, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Here’s a link to today’s deal. Natasha’s Salon and Day Spa, Islamabad.

So…

Well, let’s start with a few positives:

1. Don’t Know if Pakistan is Ready, But…

I’ll give the Groupin team a few points for starting with as much info as they possibly can. It’s a nail spa, you know what you’ll get, and it sounds like you could actually eat off the floors.

Note to my Pakistani friends: “eat off the floors” means the same as “very clean.” We Americans speak funny.

2. It appears to be a pretty good deal.

At the current exchange rate, you’re getting US$11.80 worth of services for US$3.54. So, factoring in the exchange rate, your 70% savings in Pakistani Rupees equates to 70% in US Dollars.

Note: I realize that should be obvious. But you never know.

3. These are probably the best types of services to try out. Right?

Not an expert on the Daily Deal space – friendly plug for our pals over at DealRadar, who follow this for a living – but it sounds like a good place to test market your offering if you’re Groupin. A spa or salon might be a better hook than a restaurant – plus, getting women on board first is one of the keys to Groupon’s success.

Now, for the negatives.

1. What’s next?

Given their history, we don’t know what the next deal will be. The last Groupin deal was on sugar. They appeared to have some success with it – but whether or not staples work better than destination is something that will remain to be seen.

2. Radio Silence.

We waited for quite awhile to get either a confirmation or a deal sent to our inbox from Groupin. We figured that, since we weren’t in Islamabad, we weren’t going to get anything at all.

So, when today’s deal arrived in our inbox, we were surprised. But what took them so long?

Area 224 will continue to cover this breaking story. Go Groupin!

Photo credit - Mayakamina - CC License

The thinking behind it was rather simple: the stuff can’t be that good for you, and water is a great alternative. So, after what turned out to be very little deliberation, there it was…

No more soda.

Withdrawal? Sure, some. Caffeine wasn’t cut out, so that meant more coffee throughout the day. Water made up for this quite a bit – always having a water bottle or a big cup on the desk can help.

Savings? Heck yes – why “super size” when you can order tap water instead? Why order bottled water, either, when you live in a city whose tap water is 7000 times less expensive than bottled?

Habit-breaking? This might be the toughest – so easy to run to the machine, grab a can out of the fridge, even “switch to diet” because that can’t be bad, either. But it can be done.

What does all this mean for you?

Feature vs. Benefit

Rather than dissing sugary sodas – there are countless nutritionists and food blogs to do that – instead, let’s focus on the concept of “Feature” vs. “Benefit.”

Most of the time, even soda marketers get stuck in the “Feature” department. This beverage features “zero calories.” That beverage features “great cola taste.” They don’t tell you the benefits of zero calories (less of a waistline), they point back to another feature-rich product, and tell you that theirs is similar – but zero calories.

Shiny pop cans are features.

“Naturally sweetened” – feature.

The benefits are almost always subtly – or NOT subtly – communicated in the vein of “Lifestyle.” Drink this and be like the rich athlete. Drink that and become cool like the guys in the commercials.

Are you communicating benefits?

If not, why not?

How will the prospect Benefit from signing on the dotted line with your firm? How will the customer have a better life or a better lifestyle with your product?

Even if you don’t have the marketing budget of the big boys, that’s okay. In fact, that might be even better.

The benefits of a soda-free lifestyle

You will have more money in your pocket.

You will feel better because you are consuming less junk.

You will be able to redirect time and money to pursuits that can add value to your day.

Heck, you’ll contribute to a better world because you’re contributing less cans and bottles to the recycling bins.

Communicating how the world benefits from your unique contribution? That’s uniquely valuable. Tell us how we’ll benefit.

By the way, the launch of 12 Minute Marketing is here. You can redirect some of your soda savings toward becoming a better marketer, in just 12 Minutes a day.

Click here to take advantage of the special offer. And stay hydrated.