Just over a year ago I wrote my first and only guest post, as an entry into Marketing Pilgrim’s annual competition.
At the time when I published the article, I joked that “I had been robbed“, you wouldn’t believe the number of comments suggesting a way to get my revenge, file DMCA, report to Google or recover my “stolen” article.

Climbing The Heights Of Mount Google

When you set out to climb a mountain, or rank for a competitive keyword
term, some methods are effective.

This is a simplistic look at climbing the heights of Mount Google.

Human Pyramid

A human pyramid might be suitable for those low hanging fruit, but this
method is unlikely to help you scale great heights. Not only is it hard to
gain great height, but the weak construction is easily eroded by
competitors.

Photo credit: S@TS

Belay or Blogroll

Whilst exchanging blogroll links can help lift you up to a certain level,
they can effectively anchor you to your peers. From an SEO point of view
they are more about securing your position than lifting you higher.
If you have achieved a certain height, there is nothing wrong with pulling
up a few team mates. They can then aid in a push for the summit, which can
be a very lonely solo trek.

Photo credit: dfinnecy

Grappling Hook

This is the “gizmo” mindset, that specific tools can blast your website or
blog to prominence, maybe as a clown from a circus cannon, or to scale the
walls of the Vatican in Mission Impossible.

Whilst I am a fan of some forms of automation, and it can achieve
significant results, those results are often short-lived.
Whether it is trackback and referrer spam, automated social bookmarking,
directory submission software, or other quick fix, the writing is on the
wall before you even start, only many are too blind to see it.

Not everyone gets a safety net, or is Ethan Hunt.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Teamwork

Teamwork is often the most effective method, especially if one member of the
team is already at the top of the mountain, and can pull you up.

Photo credit: JasonRogers

V.I.P. Ticket

It might not convey the same bragging rights, or sense of achievement, but
if you are a “big hitter” working for a major corporation, or have plenty of
funds to grease the wheels, there are faster ways to the top.

Photo credit: Photo Monkey

Highest Mountain

Don’t try to climb the highest mountain from the start, it will always end
in failure. Start on lower slopes, build experience, and if possible gather
together a solid team to help you scale the higher slopes of Mount Google.

Then again, who wants to be top of the mountain, and why am I writing a
guest post ;) Pull me up Andy!

2009 Competition

The 2009 Competition has just reached the judging stages – batch 1 & batch 2 – there are some good articles to read on all kinds of online marketing

Followup

As a guest article, I was a little disappointed in the results. Not so much my results in the competition, but overall traffic, appeal to Stumbleupon visitors, etc.

I deliberately chose a different style of article, more images, light weight/broad appeal content, but with a deeper message that might have not quite sunk in for readers.

I am going to try another attempt at the same article using diagrams and more specific wording soon.

Rich Schefren GPS 2.0 Live

Last year Rich Schefren did something unprecedented – what was scheduled to be a 24hr marathon live training broadcast on Ustream ended up being extended by a couple of hours.

Here is a screenshot of what Rich looked like 24hrs into the session – he was still calm and collected, solving the constraints viewers had in their business, even though his servers were being hammered and people were finding it difficult leaving comments on his blog (with 4 dedicated servers)

Rich Schefren Live

From what I have heard you will be able to listen in without signing up to the VIP list, but then you won’t receive a reminder just before the broadcast starts, and you won’t be eligible for any of the prizes.

Prizes? Yeah Rich is giving away a boatload of prizes, worth subjectively tens of thousands of dollars including private consultation (which I don’t think he really offers these days)

Rich Schefren Live – 12pm EST (midday) Thursday 18th June 2009 – scheduled to last 4 hours, though knowing Rich he might keep it running longer if there are people online.

GPS 1.0 Review

I purchased the original GPS 1.0 course – if your business isn’t going in the direction you want it, you feel you are controlled by your business, or if you have hurdles you feel you need to overcome, GPS is a unique product that will help you. Rich is an outstanding teacher.

What didn’t I like?

• The notification emails regarding live training didn’t import date/time into calendar programs
• Notification was often short, and from the same email address as other promotional items – I typically open all of Rich’s emails anyway, but I can forsee this being a problem for some
• Downloading Videos – I am a fan of downloading videos, then viewing them at 1.5 to 2x speed – something I learnt from Rich and easy to achieve with media players such as GOM. Downloading the course material from the player inside the members area was easy, downloading the recorded live sessions was extremely cumbersome and required intelligent tools or monitoring header information.

Some of these problems might be cured as I have heard that GPS 2.0 will be made available through a totally different content management platform.

Ideally I want content pushed to me, or that I can somehow automatically pull using a download manager, though I am a geek and rather set in my ways. A counter argument is that if I just get to download it, it will sit on my harddisk untouched, and that is a problem even for $1000+ courses

Rich’s launch has been running for a week or so, and this is the finale. I gained a lot of value from the live event last time – I think I watched maybe 18 hours of the 26 last time around, my son then 18 months couldn’t understand why we were watching this man talking on the screen all day rather than Teletubbies, “Lady & the Tramp” or “Jungle Book”, but maybe he picked up something too.

Anyway, I think you should try to reserve some time in your schedule to check out the free live event – last time there wasn’t any fluff, and Rich was answering real questions llive.

Dan Thies Link Building Training – Live

This is a totally different kind of training and will suit a different audience. I highly respect Dan’s knowledge and the way he presents information, both with clarity and a significant amount of humour.

Dan is running a linkbuilding course over 12 weeks, and the first part is today which you can attend free. He is only accepting 200 students for the remainder of the course and many of those seats have already been filled.
50 slots are being reserved for during his broadcast.

You can also get an idea of what the training is about from the free material he has already provided.

I am not one of Dan’s affiliates, this is very much an “internal launch” for his list, plus his Stompernet students – the free info is pretty sound and I expect this training session to deliver some valuable nuggets.

Dan Thies – 3pm United States Eastern Daylight Time, Thursday June 18. The class will last about 90 minutes

But just like Barry Schwartz wrote a few days ago, I feel that the 10% of the time they mention your name, or heaven forbid give a link through to the article they were quoting from (creating duplicate content), is something worthwhile that most people would stop climbing up a burning rope ladder to obtain.

Here are just a few tips that might help nudge the link & citation ratio up to as much as 50%

Preparation

• Text – have materials available you can quickly send them by email to clarify specific points of conversation
• Exclusive Pictures – have some exclusive material pre-prepared, whether it be screenshots or photographs at slightly different angles (individually numbered so you know what has been used)
• Links – collate reference links on your own websites, and other press coverage
• Market Awareness – know what is happening in your industry more than reporters or your competitors

Control the Conversation

If you have done the preparation, discussion about the subject should be relatively easy, but you also have to ensure you try to gain a win/win situation.

• Ask for what you want
• Be suggestive about your goal
• Make it easy for them to provide what you want

That list is a bit simplistic, but also ambiguous, so here are some more detailed ideas

Some members of the press prefer not to use citations for legal reasons, or may just simply overlook such a common courtesy.

• Tell them it is OK to cite you
• Ask them if they want to quote you
• Suggest a juicy citation

Many press websites have restrictions on deep linking, mainly as leverage with partners and competitors, sometimes for legal reasons, or just lack of understanding of how the internet really works.

• Tell them it is OK to link to you
• Ask them if they would like some supporting materials to link to
• Suggest that a link might…

Engineering Opportunity

Being well connected is sometimes extremely useful

I have done a lot of what might be looked on as “joint venture” marketing, but at the end of the day it really resulted in being able to demonstrate your hot product for free on the stand of a Fortune 500 company at major exhibitions such as Cebit, Comdex, Game Developer Conference, E3 and ECTS.

In one situation I was talking to the rep of one Fortune 500, and asked whether their other Fortune 500 partner had arranged any special press coverage for an event where I was just expecting to have one of my guys sit at a computer and demo our products. We already had a large booth at the same show (I will save that for another day), so I wasn’t going to be present on their booth much to talk to press.
The rep said he would check into it, and the next day I received a call from the press, did a short interview, and gained a large shared 1 page segment in the show edition of the primary press sponsor. The coverage was actually more valuable than if we had taken a paid double page centre spread, which would have cost more than our total booth outlay (I did some great deals on the booth).
I didn’t get just name and company association, I effectively gained endorsements from both Fortune 500 companies, and our booth ended up being mobbed.

How mobbed? Well our booth had 16 demo computers and 2 rooms, one was intended for me to hold meetings, and the other was for storage. My CEO ended up holding meetings in the storage room that was rapidly cleared out and furnished with 2 chairs and a table, and missed all the development lectures he had planned to attend.

My wife and the CEOs girlfriend, who were meant to spend a few days shopping in London ended up on booth duty full time.

Confidence, Training & Professional Integrity

If you are confident in your dealings with the press, you can often negotiate better coverage (whilst retaining journalistic integrity).
Training is often effectively setting ground rules and expectations. If members of the press know they can get a juicy citation out of you, and you make their job easier as a source of in depth knowledge, they are more likely to follow through with a win/win situation, such that you no longer have to worry about whether you will get a citation or a link, and you can focus more on the content they will present.

Conclusion

The more you work it, the more success you will achieve. You deserve to get more than just crumbs, and defining what you want to achieve within a win/win relationship is highly important, and may even enhance your ethical working relationship with the press.

Duncan Carver is one of those niche marketers who just disappears off on holiday for almost a year… because he can!

He is also famous for having created probably the best free link manager script

So Duncan is now back and proving that once you understand how to research a niche, and create a product to sell to that niche, the world really is your oyster.

In fact I bet he will probably go back on holiday in a few months having created a few more full-time income streams.

The Niche

Worm Farming… yes seriously, and it seems to be a hot niche

I am not going to link directly through to his niche site, because many might think that would influence results too much. Actually it wouldn’t because Duncan with his multiple web properties and his own link network has links pretty much sorted.

So far he has already covered:-

• Project Introduction – a great introduction where Duncun demonstrates he is following a set business plan
• Market Selection – this is a really good example of the niche market selection process. It isn’t hard to find real profitable niches, despite people thinking there is too much competition out there.
• Link Building Campaign – A beginner isn’t going to have the funds or the existing network to use every method Duncan is using, but honestly, if he wasn’t making this new niche site public, and staying under the radar, he most likely wouldn’t need many links to get some good rankings.

This really is a step by step process, and will probably contain many tips that you won’t find in many ebooks, and if you followed this process in another niche you would be almost certain to achieve good results.

My only criticism so far… Duncan please use mod_rewrite for those permalinks

Whilst I have submitted Duncan’s blog to Digg, there is probably too much content for the average Digg user