Making videos is often easy enough with all the technologies available today. You can easily do a screen recording, or video recording or even use your cell phone to record a video. However, getting a video to go VIRAL isn’t easy. I mean, lets face it – if your not the most important person in the world, who’s going to watch your video or visit your website?

The word Buzzworthy was used and abused by a number of marketers, and so was “Going viral, go viral, viral content etc..” and I don’t think most people really TRULY understand what that means.. So, I’m going to create a series of materials that I like to call “Tell a Friend” Content.

What is Tell a Friend Content?

Would you tell a friend about it? Then it’s definitely tell a friend content… That’s what it’s going to take to get your video to the masses at blistering fireball speed. You want your youtube video to get 1 million hits? This is how you can achieve it.

I’m starting in the realm of video but I will touch on viral content as well before this series is over.

The first video in the series

In This Short 8 Minute Video I Cover:

• Why you would want a video to go viral and have people spread the word
• What 3 common types of videos get the most views
• How to find keyword research that’s instant, 7 days old or 30 days old.
• Which videos are not viewed as sales garbage and are easy to create
• Over 8 different call to actions you can use

It also offers a bit of a tease as to what the next video will include. The next video we’ll get into how to submit the videos to multiple networks without signing up to any expensive tools or blowing your marketing budget. In fact, unless otherwise noted most of the strategies we teach are completely free.

WARNING…

You won’t probably remember to keep hitting refresh on the Youtube Channel, you won’t remember to visit my twitter account or much else, so If you WANT the video coming out next “Submit to 15 video sites on autopilot completely free”, then sign up to my newsletter on the right side. You’ll get a free book out of the deal (3,000 emotional words) so you can’t complain… You can always opt-out any time so it’s not like your signing your life away!

My friends, I made a bit of a mistake end of December in thinking that the Google Caffeine update was going to finally stop new websites and new links from taking crazy time to be utilized… It seems Google promised and even thru various developers I spoke to had PLANNED on making full use of instant news-style spiderage.

However, that’s simply not the case. Even with breaking news, we discovered last year when Michael Jackson passed away on us that Google was unable to keep up offering real-time results in it’s searches for appropriate terms…

What’s the big mistake?

From all the technical information I recieved thru various sources, and a few tests of my own… I saw websites popping up in Google within hours. Sometimes within hours of registration and zero links and starting to show up and rank… However this was not an effect of Caffeine taking action. This was a mis-leading fluke in some very non-competitive industries.

Spidering Indexing & Ranking

For the last 6 years I’ve been able to stand firm on the fact that it took 90 days to see the full effect of your effort in SEO, and it looked like in 2010, that would all change (As it should!). However, at least with this update, I strongly believe that’s not going to happen.

I noticed with some client websites in competitive spaces that the link strategies we applied are only now starting to take effect that are from nearly 2 months before… It’s hard to tell clients that to their faces when they’re so money starved, so anxious to make a buck that these long term investments will pay off… And in the SEO world, it’s easy to become unsure yourself! – But they do pay off.

I made the mistake of second guessing myself on that fact, and there are some general old-school strategies that are still getting results in low-lying markets and they will have a blip-on-the-radar effect on competitive markets… So it’s not without reason.

Anyway, enough ranting. Enjoy your day!

Rest assured that if your selling SEO even if you (By total fluke) see a bump in traffic in under 90 days it’s probably not intentional or should be expected…

I know I’m getting asked this by clients, I’m having friends and co-workers ask me this… It’s not an easy answer and it’s not something someone can easily just say… It’s one simple strategy…. Do this and you will be successful…

Fact is everything’s going Pink… (No-Follow), and everything’s getting censored and all the old white-hats and blackhat’s aren’t working the way they used to… To re-cap here’s a few strategies that won’t work well for you in 2010…

• Article Marketing (unless you plan to become the guru of the topic)
• Social Bookmarking (a few sites help, but unless your content is fantastic… this is dead)
• Paid Links (Google has ways of figuring these out even if it’s not ever published…)
• Blog Comments (yes, even the do follows don’t do much)
• Wikipedia Links (For SEO? Nope.. But for click traffic it’s still good)
• Social Profiles (for link building no, for ranking for niche phrases.. maybe..)
• Parasite hosting (not very ethical… and they do get deleted, then what?)
• Directory Submissions (the main directories and niche topic ones.. will help, but the smaller ones wont.)
• Hub page creation (for niche phrases, short term strategy perhaps but not long term as competitors creep in)
• Guestbook Signing (hello 2003, I was finding this effective for a bit, but now they’re so heavily monitored…)
• Online classifieds (45 days worth of link juice… if it doesn’t get deleted…)

So what do you have to do to get rankings and long term traffic?

Fact is that one of my favorite things to say for the last 6 years has been this… If it makes good business sense to get advertising from a certain site or join partners with a certain site, then it makes good SEO sense too. The best strategy that existed before modern SEO strategy is to get people talking. Write about topics people want to hear about… I think this will be the age of Real time search, where believe it or not… Tools like the Google keyword tool, Wordtracker and those others will be completely obsolete…

Your new keyword research tools are:

• Twitter (search “I want to know…” – “I can’t find..”)
• Yahoo Answers
• Google Answers
• Forums around niche topics

By the time 30 days rolls around and the search volume data is available to Wordtracker and Google, it’s 30 days old. It’s ancient news. It may not even *BE* In demand anymore. Oh yes, you’re going to see that real time answers are the next big thing. If you’re not on top of your game, your niche. If your finger isn’t on the pulse of your customer’s wants, needs and desires, you’re dead in 2010.

Am I being unfair? Nope.

Update from Wordtracker:

“The only point I’d like to raise is that Wordtracker’s data isn’t just 30 days old. While the US dataset goes back 365 days, new data is added every day, and this new data is between 16 and 30 hours old when it hits the servers.”

Many of the information and advice I post on here from time to time is straight technical traffic strategies and that was my original intention. However, it’s been on my mind to pass on some of the hard lessons of 2009.

For the last 6 years, I’ve provided SEO, Copywriting, PPC, and a whole heap of other services through my company, AnswersWanted Inc designed to boost client website traffic and of course, sales.

With the issues facing the american economy, I was forced to many jobs this last year that aren’t really my specialty… Things like accounting, sales, customer service, contract writing, and a whole host of other hats that I’d never had to wear… This forced me to learn some amazing lessons worth their weight in gold that I’d like to pass on to my friends and readers.

The Top Lessons in Offering SEO Services as A Freelancer…

#1. Always ALWAYS get a signed contract…

Yeah, small job, right? No need to get it all out on paper! I mean, seriously this job is going to be super simple and the client understands all the technicalities, and all the challenges etc… YEAH RIGHT!

Truth is, if you don’t outline what your offering, what your expecting from them, how much you expect to make, where you’ll meet, how often you’ll report, how many hours they get, where they’re money is going etc..

And.. plan for what happens if your strategy or plan doesn’t work… Sure, it worked the last 36 times, but that doesn’t matter. Plan for when it stops working and write a plan in your contracts for what then…

#2. NEVER offer anything free…

Seems so rude, rough and mean to say… In fact it’s hard for a guy like me to say that… over the years I’ve offered so many things free… Consultations, meetings, analysis, research… I want to help clients so badly that I’ll do anything to ensure they succeed…

Aaron Wall pointed out some time ago, and it’s a well known fact in business that the more you offer free, the more they want free. It never ends and it continues to de-value your work… Completely un-doing all the reputation earning and hard work you’ve done…

One day, you deliver an invoice and they scoff at it… How dare you charge? You’ve done it free all this time! Both you and the customer loose.

#3. Set expectations and deliver on them

Always create deadlines, and communicate them to your clients. Put things on the calendar, always give projects and jobs a timeline and stick to it. Just like being late for an interview, no one hires someone 15 minutes late. Always be on time, always set a deadline and meet or BEAT it.

Not only expectations within time, but expectations about the project…. How much traffic will a customer get with your strategy? How many keywords you focusing on? How many media outlets you distributing to? Seems like lots of work ironing out those details, but it’ll burn you if you don’t.

#4. Set specific hours, and take breaks.

Insanely important to not answer emails, phone calls or text messages related to work during your off time. You’ll never have a girlfriend or a wife very long if you’re taking calls, emails and texts during dinner, anniversary’s or honeymoons.

It’s not only that, having downtime helps you think, it helps you rest and prepare for a hard week. Some weeks might feel like you need less or more. In the end it’s like air, you don’t know how badly you need rest until you stop taking it.

#5. Don’t answer your phone

I’d even go as far as to say turn off your cell phone and office line durring business hours and respond to voicemails twice a day. Never answer calls… Why? When someone calls you if you respond while in the middle of a project they steal your time, your productivity and your energy.. They can blind-side you when you’re not prepared for it.. They control that call because they initiated it…

Let the voice mail catch it, educate your customers to leave DETAILED messages or they don’t get response… You can follow up via email if they phoned to check the number on an invoice or some other insignificant thing…

** Update ** – This isn’t really targeted toward 100% of clients, but i’m sure you have call display, and some clients can easily phone so much that you don’t get any work done. Anita and others are right though, there should be some hours you turn off the phone maybe 3-4 hours a day and just focus on work. Turn off MSN, Gtalk and other distractions too. Rich Schefren I think talks about the 45 minute egg timer of focused work for productivity too.

This isn’t my suggestion to IGNORE folks, or not provide good customer service. These are critical. What most probably don’t realize when reading this is that my business model often includes a weekly or every 2 week conference call. Not always, but often. With a setup like that, we’re always keeping in touch.

#6. Use some kind of online organization

One saving grace that has helped me over the last 2 years more than anyone knows is my Wiki. I use it like a CRM system for managing customers and clients.. I don’t always remember to use it for everything, but even just for passwords and contact info it has been a life saver. I can access it from home, office, client places and everywhere. It’s amazing.

#7. Trust your gut instincts all the way

Yeah, it’s hard if you don’t have a strong self esteem to trust your guts… and sometimes it’s tough to NOT take a deal or contract with a pushy client if your struggling for money, but trust me… Don’t do it. Your guts are the most useful business tool you have and the right opportunity will come along and you’ll know it, and when it’s not… your instincts are vital.

A few times I’ve looked at working with clients where it just didnt’ feel right, but I was in a position where I needed an extra gap filled to keep all my staff employed… and when my gut told me no,  I took the deal and it backfired.

#8. Startups…

In the contracting world, whether it’s SEO, PPC or any other service… Unless you own it, or own 50% of it… You really don’t wanna help startups in many cases. They don’t know how valuable your services really are, they may never understand, they may not have proven their product or have a good conversion rate… It could be complete garbage… Most independent contractors will tell you that the best clients are those who have spent $10,000 on a magazine ad “test” and failed.. living only to test again.. Startups spend $1000 and cry all the way the bank.

Some startups, organized and started by folks who have started many businesses before could be a perfect fit… but trust your gut before working with just anyone.

Anyway, to any contractor looking for advice re-selling internet marketing services, these are some of my biggest lessons that should make 2010 the best year ever.

Daniel J Deyette