But we content creators (bloggers, artists, writers, comedians, authors) have many inspirations. Any blogger can tell you that 90% of their blog posts do OK but a few blog posts get massive shares, likes and comments. Why? We don’t always know.

Some people want to reverse engineer success. If we could only analyze the Old Spice commercials and reproduce that. If we could draw the lessons from BlendTec and do that for your company. How many of you have succeeded with that? And by success, I mean AS AMAZING results as Old Spice or BlendTec. Not just “kinda good”, “some response”. Let me know. I haven’t heard of anyone succeeding that way.

But I’m not surprised about that- and if you are, you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Viral Successes Are Inspired

Viral and social success comes from inspiration and creativity. Novelty. ”Wow- what is this? I’ve never seen anything like this before!”

We have trouble reproducing creative success and virality for the same reason there’s a sophomore slump. Outliers are outliers by definition. They can’t all be great. We return to average (regress to the mean).

Ask author Elizabeth Gilbert about the pressure of trying to write a follow-up to Eat Pray Love. She did an amazing TED talk about it. She explained how and why we don’t control our genius.

Do you think Picasso or Van Gogh knew which of their paintings would be most famous? Did they have the power to create their most successful art whenever they wanted?

When we are having ideas and creating, we don’t know how it will be received. We can’t know. We can only create. That’s where great art and great comedy and great content comes from- inspiration.

You Can’t Reverse-Engineer Inspiration

If you’ve ever created anything and waited for that flash of inspiration, or even written a blog post and had writer’s block, you know it’s not totally in your control.

When we analyze and try to reverse engineer, we end up creating a Frankenstein the entire village wants to kill. It looks like creativity, but it’s not creative. It looks like art, but it’s not. It looks like other viral marketing videos, but no one responds to it.

For a while I joked that you can’t just create a viral video by throwing hot women, cute animals, and a guy faceplanting off a skateboard into it. Using the elements of many successes don’t ensure future success. And then Vitamin Water created something very much like that, the following video which includes 8 or 10 Internet Memes:

It doesn’t work, does it? I don’t know about you, but I feel manipulated, like they thought that referencing these memes would be as exciting as those memes were originally. Or maybe they’re just trying to say “we know about memes therefore we’re cool too”. Or maybe it’s just like those Oceans 13 movies that have to succeed because they include so many proven Hollywood stars. Either way, it seems too obvious, like you’re trying too hard, and the video only gets 223,000 views despite having had the advantage of national TV distribution. It was seen by enough people that if it had word-of-mouth power, it would have gone NUTS.

Truly viral videos at this level get MILLIONS  of views, so this is a failure by that standard. And it should be. You can’t be awesome by just throwing in everything that’s funny into one thing. Even if you’re Family Guy, you have to tie them together somehow. Another example- The Heat and the Knicks haven’t won imediately just by throwing all-stars together. The recipe for awesomeness and champions is more complicated than that- and every winning recipe looks slightly different.

Just Work

So anyhow, the point is- you can’t plan awesomeness… not when creativity is involved. You engage in the process of being creative, which has nothing to do with previous successes. You create. You work. And some of your creations are awesome, but most are just good. Some of them suck. That’s the way it is.

If you want to succeed with content marketing, you just have to keep creating. And stop trying to copy or reproduce previous successes- yours or anyone else’s. Accept that some of your work will succeed amazingly, but most of it will not. Enjoy the work. Support the people who are doing the work.

What sucks about these latest updates is that all kinds of companies are affected, and not just people who tried to game the system. I’ve talked to some that have lost 30-60% of their natural search visitors from Google. Some people are losing a lot of their livelihood because of this. There’s even a petition telling Google to kill the update. Good luck with that. You might want to just spend more money on AdWords ads, which you can actually control, and for which Google actually has customer service.

Google updates are not new, and some are more destructive than others. Google’s been making changes to try to improve the quality of their search results for more than a decade. That probably won’t change. Google will steam ahead, and you’ll have to adapt… or Google will become unpopular. Either way, if your business relies mainly on Google natural results, you’re at risk.

What I want to say is pretty simple, and so smart that there’s a well known saying for it…

Stop putting your eggs all in one basket.

This is the same reason I am leery of companies investing their entire marketing budget into their Facebook fan pages. What if Facebook changes the rules? Or accidentally deletes your page? Or finds that you violated one of their promotional guidelines and is justified in deleting your page? Or goes the way of the Dodo and MySpace? Yep, you’re in big trouble.

So what are the most reliable, stable, solid marketing investments?

When you get email addresses from customers or prospects, you can control these, regardless of the platform. Not so Facebook fans. Not so Google rankings. Have you noticed the process most social networks get you onboard with? Yes, with your email contacts. Oh, they use your Facebook contacts? How did you get your first Facebook contacts? Email. Get it?

When you network with real people, you build real relationships that may outlive every website that’s now popular. Real people can give you real business. Anonymous fans are such weak ties that you may lose them too easily and regaining them might be impossible.

I’m not saying don’t do Facebook or don’t do SEO for Google. I’m saying… do it all: Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, blog, infographics, video, networking, speaking, writing…

DIVERSIFY

And think ahead.

These points apply to small businesses, infoproducts, consultants, as well as to the launch of new brands or products by bigger companies. They apply to anyone that wants effective marketing and needs their customers to take action, become leads, or buy something.

7 Failure Points For Launches & Start-Ups

In a startup/launch situation, here are the things that can go wrong:

1. Error with purchasing process- not actually possible to buy
2. Tracking set up incorrectly
3. Wrong audience targeting
4. Wrong ad messaging
5. Product or service that no audience wants
6. Landing page that doesn’t sell the product effectively
7. Wrong price for audience

Problems #1 and #2: Can They Actually Buy It And Are We Tracking It?

Purchase happens at the end of the process, but if it doesn’t work, you’ll waste time on everything else. Does your order process work? And if you’ve set up tracking, have you run a test order via Facebook ads and AdWords ads and made sure it tracked them properly? If not, you may get back bad data which makes you think there’s another problem, when in fact, there’s not. Check these first.

Problems #3 and #4: Hitting The Right Prospects With The Right Message

The first two are about how you get people to hear about and consider what you’re offering. You could use Facebook, AdWords, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, content marketing- really any traffic generation strategy. The question is, are you reaching the right prospects/audience? And are you hitting them with a message that makes sense to them and stimulates them to click and consider your offer.

I realized after working with a few startups that I had to explain that the first stage is actually market research and message testing. If you can’t get people to click to your site, you can’t grow traffic or customers. No matter how much you think you know about your potential customers, you don’t know yet what marketing messages will get results. The first step is to get them to pay attention and to click.

Problem #5: Does Anyone Really Want To Buy This?

If no one has ever bought what you’re selling, how do you know ANYONE wants it? When you create a service or product, hopefully you started with what you knew people wanted. Sometimes they need something but don’t want it. How badly do they want it?

Sometimes, in the early stages, there aren’t good results, so we wonder- “is it the traffic generation strategy, or is it the product/service?” Maybe no one wants it. If you can make AdWords part of your early traffic generation strategy, you’re more likely to find people searching for exactly what you offer at exactly the time they need it. If you can’t get sales from that, there’s something in stages three through six.

Once you get that first sale- that’s a HUGE deal. There’s a near infinite distance between zero and one. One sale tells you it’s possible, and you just need to tweak it in various ways to make it more profitable. Zero sales is the biggest problem.

Problem #6: Is Your Landing Page Effective?

Landing pages are crazy. It’s easier to test ad messages to see what gets a response. With landing pages, are you split-testing two approaches? One of my clients used two videos, and people only watched one for one minute but they watched the other video for three minutes. Performance can vary widely. Test multiple landing pages, headlines, and videos. Use CrazyEgg to see where they’re clicking and where they’re not. Set up analytics goals to see which traffic sources do what. You need more tests and more tracking to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Problem #7: Wrong Price For Audience

If  you track the number of people to your lead form AND the number that submit it, you find out how many balk at the last step. If you have prices on that lead form, this is a way to test pricing for audiences from different sources. If you have an ecommerce site and track people who put something in the cart versus those who buy, you can find out how much hesitancy there is at the actual purchase decision. Maybe you need to add a sweetener or some kind of urgency to get more conversions. Maybe your prices are too high or too low. You can also test multiple landing pages, each with different prices.

Conclusion

The process is more complex than most people think. The number of things that can go wrong is higher. The amount of testing you need and the quality of tracking is greater. And that is one reason why so many small businesses fail. Even Coke has launched failed products. Every new launch or new business is a test. You must have a plan, and a budget and some time for exploration. You may discover which is your problem above and have to spend even more time finding the solution. Or it may just come down to #5 – no matter what you do, nobody really wants it.

But hopefully this post gives you a map and troubleshooting guide, and more of you will succeed!

Oh, also, check out this killer graphic from Nielsen for more ideas!

The priority for which parts of the funnel to work on.

If you’re accountable for Internet business-to-business lead generation, the last thing you want is for the leads to dry up. This is harder to address if you’re wearing many hats in your company. You might neglect the top of the funnel.

I read a great white paper recently (Taming The Volatile Sales Cycle from Miller Heiman) that talked about focusing on the top of the funnel and the bottom, more than the middle.

1. First try to close the leads who are near purchasing.

2. Second, make sure you have more new leads coming in.

3. Third, work on the middle leads. Don’t let them keep you from getting more new leads, or pretty soon, you’ll run out of leads.

The middle of the funnel can be very time-consuming, and some of them will never close. The profitability of your time spent on the middle is lower.  The most aware and proactive prospects will move through this quickly, and won’t need as much assistance. They’re the low hanging fruit of sales, so close ‘em!

There’s some work you may already at the top of the funnel do to get leads, but are you capitalizing on that work as much as you could? Here are some of the things I do that I believe keep leads coming into the top of the funnel.

Get More Free Leads From Google

Many sites get their best leads from natural search activity. Often they are stronger prospects who believe in you more and spend more than leads from ads. Not everyone cares whether you advertise, but some do- those people are more skeptical than people who came in from natural search.

Keywords Are Key

If you don’t know what Google keywords you should be using, you’re in trouble. Use the AdWords keyword tool to find good keywords. Make sure your web analytics are set up to track goals. If you have a CRM that tracks keywords, that helps immensely.

Google Analytics is not as good for correlating specific keywords to leads anymore. BUT it may be simpler than that- if you really only have 4-5 major keywords, you can optimize for all of them anyway. 80-20 rule, for the win

So, once you have those keywords- do you have at least one blog post with that keyword in the title? When you’re writing a post, take a second to look at the keywords you might use. Shape a title that’s both creative and search-smart.

The keyword tool can give you related keywords for each main keyword (click on that down-arrow next to the keyword). Blog on those subtopics as well. Are you linking from one post to another using those keywords? Do it! It may change your phrasing in a sentence a bit or make you add a paragraph, but it’s worth it. You know what you’re writing about, but does Google? Do Google searchers know? Use keywords.

Are you tracking your ranking for those keywords? If it’s just a few, you can use a Chrome incongnito window to find them manually, but if they’re worse than the fifth page, this can be time-consuming. I like SEScout for keeping  track of my rankings.

Links Are Votes

Are other websites linking to yours? If not, you need to think  about links. Links are the biggest competitive advantage in natural search. To Google, they’re votes for the importance of your site.

You can get links many ways without traveling into the realm of spam.

• Your press releases can have live links in them.
• Tweets with links in them are links… people retweeting those links counts too. Plus these are fresh (recent) links, and Google likes that.
• Pinterest posted images can use a link in the description. This is a live link.
• Ask your closest peers if they’ll link to you in their blogroll, on a recommended sites page, or in their footer.
• You have other relevant content, so link to it, just use the keyword as the anchor text! That’s internal linking, and not enough on its own, but still helps.

Don’t get too picky about types of links, nofollows, etc. Just get more links and let all that take care of itself.

Use Social Media Scheduling To Amplify Your Content

Do you have Twitter profile, a LinkedIn profile, a LinkedIn company page, or a public Facebook page? Anything you post here can count toward Google links and ranking. Even the public elements of your Facebook profile count in this way.

Are you creating evergreen content that should be good for at least 3 -6  months? If you posted something a month ago that’s still good, why not tweet or Facebook-post it again? I’m certain that not everyone saw it.

Have people already shared or retweeted some of your content? If so, that should happen again when you re-post. Humans will see these directly and may become prospects- and it all counts for SEO.

Use HootSuite to schedule repostings ahead. I don’t use hootsuite to pretend to be asking someone a question on Twitter right now. I find that to be a bit inauthentic. But I do think scheduled repostings (kind of like TV reruns) are fine.

Another tip: do you have an international audience? Think about their time zones when you’re scheduling ahead. Post some just for them.

Pinterest

Don’t overlook this, because if you can post something interesting, you can add a link. Humans click, and Google counts it. You can also easily post the link to the Pinterest pin on Twitter and Facebook. Then, the link may show on Twitter, be counted, the link to Pinterest leads to another page with that link on it- it’s counted twice!

It’s easy to find things to pin- I wouldn’t suggest you use other people’s content to promote your links- but you can create your own images and infographics with which to do this.

See the lead generation sales funnel picture in the upper right of this very post? That’s an example. I wanted you to be able to visualize that process, but I also planned to pin it. It has my contact info in the image itself, so no matter what text accompanies its repins, people will still be able to find me.

Internet Advertising

I know, for some weird reason I am still trying to understand, some people don’t like advertisers and don’t feel comfortable advertising. But many companies either swear by its ability to let new prospects know they exist, or have daily proof that it gives them profitable sales. There are many ways to advertise, from dignified to spammy. You can simply use your logo or face and state what you do for people. Or you can use crazy pictures of babies and old men. It’s up to you to customize it.

For me, it’s an invaluable source of exposure. I get new business and speaking leads from it every week.

What I do is spend a little bit in AdWords, Facebook and LinkedIn- rather than putting my eggs in one basket. Years of looking at analytics reports has led me to believe that

1. It’s better if people hear from me on multiple sites- “this guy is everywhere!”

2. It’s better if people see me more often (it takes multiple exposures to register in the brain and get people thinking about buying from me)

3. Some people are only on one or two of the sites. The targeting for each is imperfect. On AdWords I can only get people who are in a buying frame of mind. On Facebook I get the everyday people, but not all the professionals. On LinkedIn, I get the professionals, but they don’t spend a lot of time there.

So?

Do this stuff! It keeps people seeing your content and website, increases your Google rankings, and gets more leads.

Keep the leads coming!

Why? What’s your competitive advantage? You have to have one in order to carve out a profitable place for yourself, or your company. For some people, it’s the fact that they’re competitive. If you aren’t competitive, maybe your talent is finding people to partner with who are competitive.

You can compete with others, but even better, you can compete against yourself. Warren Buffet calls it his “internal scorecard”.

Be better than yesterday’s you. I have an internal drive that demands results daily. It’s frustrating at times, because progress is two steps forward, one step back. But it keeps me moving toward my dreams.

12 years ago, I decided I wanted to be an author and professional speaker.

• My first book was self-published when I was still involved in alternative medicine. I wanted to be the next Andrew Weil or Deepak Chopra. I wrote and wrote online. The book didn’t make a huge impact- in fact, the first review attacked my character! But I wrote it, and that was an important step forward.
• I was a complete introvert with zero charisma. So, I spent a couple years in Toastmasters learning the basics of public speaking. Then did I stand-up comedy, even though I never thought I could. I made people laugh. Later I took improv comedy classes. These all developed my performance and communication abilities.
• My first “real” book wasn’t published until last year, and suddenly people looked at me differently. I was a real expert that they should listen to.
• Now I do professional paid keynote speaking and paid webinars. I make them laugh and they get useful info that helps them move their businesses forward.

It wasn’t too many years ago that professional paid speaking seemed as far away from me as the moon. I wasn’t sure I could do it, or that anyone would want me to. Now I know I can do this- I’ve proven it to myself and others. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that it’s working out. But I worked hard for it, for more than a decade!

The point is: don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do what your dream is.

The biggest example recently is Jeremy Lin. He was overlooked because of stereotypes. They told him he didn’t belong by cutting him. When he got the right chance, he revived the Knicks with a 7-game win streak and historic-level performances by someone who’d played as few NBA games as he had. There are only a few NBA Greats that ever did what he has. Now other teams center their defensive plans around stopping him. He’s become one of the most important guys in the league within a few weeks- but it took him years of preparation and ignoring naysayers to get there. He reinvented himself.

Go after your dreams.

In total, it’s about two hours, and you can get it for $31.99. Or you can buy specific videos for $3.99 each.

I’m proud to say that with the exception of how the “backstage area” of a Page looks, and the change from impressions to reach metric on Pages, everything in the book and videos still applies. It’s fortunate that the tactics I have focused on have not been destroyed by Facebook’s latest changes. We can’t say the same for custom tabs and welcome tabs.

The last show I spoke at, I ran into a guy who runs an agency- he told me that he’d bought 10 copies of the Like Economy, that all their new hires have to read it, and that I wouldn’t believe the results they were getting with it. I’ve seen the same thing with a couple other agencies, so I know this stuff works.

If you haven’t read the book- or if you did but you want something more visual- get this video series and let me know what you think!

The trade show floor at Keystone's "Big Show"

Just got back from keynote speaking at Keystone Automotive’s “Big Show” in Atlantic City. My talk is mostly about why businesses do Internet marketing and social media, what they screw up, and how to do it right. I was speaking to an audience of custom auto shop owners and auto part retail store owners. These folks, like many small business owners, see the value in doing social media, but many have no idea where to start- or find the process overwhelming.

In my talk, I included a simple social media marketing plan for small businesses. Many attendees came up afterwards asking me to email them a copy of that plan. It hit a nerve.  [Social media experts, please see the note at the end of this post]

Learning social media can be overwhelming. There are hundreds of blog posts published per week. What business owner has time to read all this? Where’s the up-to-date overview?  Sometimes you’ll find an overview or plan in  a book, but then you still have to spend 8 hours reading a book. Let’s face it, most people don’t like to read that much!

I created this simple plan and put it into video format for easy reference.

Many Businesses Don’t Have Enough Time For Social Media

What I’ve learned from talking to many small businesses is that they don’t even have an hour a day for social media. That makes sense, right? They can’t spend 8-10% of their time doing social media… they’re running a business, and that’s more than full-time already. Medium sized companies have more resources, but still may have only one marketing person who can’t do social media full time.

The 1 Hour Per Week Social Media Marketing Plan

I looked around online, and there is no really time-efficient social media marketing plan that will help small businesses at least begin to take advantage of social media. So I created one.

If you’re a small business owner, you’re going to love this, because it’s easy, and simple.

Watch the video!

A note for social media experts about this plan: Yes, it’s simple- you may call it overly simplified. You may disagree with it (e.g. I think Pinterest is more important for some businesses than Twitter is). But the main value here is its utility. Things that are impressive in social media “echo chamber” of Silicon Valley are unrealistic in a back-office in the Ohio Valley. It’s taken me a whole bunch of speaking gigs to figure out that many people are looking for something simple, achievable and effective. I think this plan is a great first step. Anyone who starts on it will end up learning more, and may seek out more advanced help from you later on.

Is there really anything special about leap day? Do leprechauns emerge from the ground to bless us with unicorns? Nope, just that it’s just a big deal because it’s rare. Once every 4 years.

We are fascinated by rarity.

We look for the exception.

We pay more for remarkable things and people.

How can your business be more unique?

If you’re the same as your competitors, customers can beat you down on price.

If you’re different, you own your value, and you set your own price.

That means those like gates (first image says “hey like our page because…” and second image says thanks or gives you access to something) won’t really be effective anymore. It already wasn’t the biggest new fan source for most pages- but now it will be irrelevant.

So how do you get new fans now?

These tactics still work:

• Use a Like Box on your site- this puts a small representation of your FB page on your website. People can click like there and become fans.
• Run ads with your page as the destination. Get them to click like on the ad. Then they’re a fan.
• Leverage all your other methods to exposure: Put up posters in stores, email your email list, etc.

So what?

This is exciting for designers, maybe, but not for people who want bottom-line social media marketing results.

Explain to me how the new look will improve your business results in any way?

Less than 1% of fans go to back to Facebook pages after they’ve like them.

This knowledge has been out there for 9 months. See the 7 Biggest Fan Page Marketing Mistakes. Facebook is not another website for your business – it’s more like an email list, because fans usually consume your page’s posts from their homepage, not from the business page itself. If you have fans, and you want to reach them, then you post on your page, but they see it on their Facebook homepage (in their newsfeed).

Fans don’t come back to your beautiful Timeline Page.

So by all means, make your business’s page look good with the new layout, and feature a post at the top of the page, but don’t expect a lot of your fans to be looking at the actual page. Facebook doesn’t work that way. Your brand’s Timeline needs to look good, but 40-160 times as many people will see your posts in their newsfeeds, not on your Timeline page.

Get back to work.

The real work is getting fans to SEE your posts, which happens if they like and comment on your posts. If you aren’t working hard on making your posts more interesting and getting more likes and comments, but instead, you’re anticipating how cool the Timeline will make the page look, you’re on the wrong track.

Stop trying to look cool and start looking for opportunities to get results.

What’s frustrating for me is that so many people get excited about things like the new Timeline for Pages. “Wow it’s going to look cool!” Really? You’re in the business of looking cool? I mean yes, that’s cool, but do you really think that the look of the old business page is why you haven’t taken your social media marketing results to the next level? Get real.

I think Facebook only created the new Timeline for brands because brands started asking for it as soon as the user pages on Facebook looked better than the business pages. It was strange, really- they hadn’t mentioned doing it for business pages, but people assumed they would. And a Facebook exec said they were just “thinking about it.”

What you should be paying attention to instead

Meantime, there have been several opportunities brands could use on Facebook to get more traffic, interaction and sales:

• The new actions - create your brand’s own “like”, leverage the social graph and go viral- e.g. Nike’s FuelBand
• videos in sponsored posts - get 100,000+ people to see your video for pennies
• Infinigraph viral content insights - find out what content in your niche is most viral and interactive, and what times and days are best for your page to post
• campalyst post ROI tracking – hook together your Facebook page and Google analytics to track the profitability of each post.
• Facebook ads. Everyone in Facebook marketing still isn’t using Facebook ads or getting better at using them, they’re the most powerful and affordable type of online ad, and they’ve been around for years.

If you think the new Timeline for Pages is more exciting then these, they you aren’t really interested in business results, or you don’t understand how Facebook works, or your only strategic goal is to make your company look cool. Which is it for you?

I’m a Facebook expert, social media speaker and Internet marketing strategy consultant. I also conduct SEO audits.

Let me know if you want help!