What’s Your Shtick?

A shtick is a Yiddish word that means your gimmick or unique talent. In the business world they call this your USP, Unique Selling Proposition. Essentially, what makes you different from your competition? What do you have to offer that they don’t? For example, a freelance writer might differentiate themselves by delivering any article or blog post project in 24 hours – the 24-Hour Article Service.

Narrow Your Focus

Trying to be all things to all people does one thing – it increases your competition. Specializing, on the other hand, narrows your competition. It also helps you become the best at what you do. For example, instead of offering information products on how to care for your pet, you might specialize in how to care for your aging dog. Or how to care for your aging Pomeranian. Specialization can virtually eliminate your competition.

Become Invaluable

Offer products, information, and resources that make you invaluable to your audience. When planning your business, ask yourself this single question – what can I do to offer more value to my audience? Of course, you have to know your audience well to answer this question.

Be Memorable

You cannot be boring in this competitive market and survive. Now that doesn’t mean you have to be over the top either. Instead, be yourself. Capture the interest of your audience and customers by sharing your personality with them in your content, interactions, and even in your products or services.

Pay Attention to Your Customers

Chances are you already have some very valuable information regarding what your customers respond to. Take a look at what they buy, when they buy, what emails they open and what links they click. This information will help you hone in on how to offer value and how to be memorable. It may also help you specialize.

Build a Community

Connect with your audience and customers on a regular basis. Invite them to get involved through a number of means. For example, invite them to connect with you on Facebook. Ask questions and invite comments.

Repeat Successes

Pay attention to what works for you and repeat it. For example, if you find that checklists are downloaded more than free reports you know that your audience enjoys checklists. If they buy more during the summer than in the winter then offer them more during the summer.

Staying ahead of your competition doesn’t just mean following their actions online and reacting to them. Instead, create a plan to be proactive. Differentiate yourself and focus on your customer. That’s how you’ll survive and thrive long term.

#1 Review It

Create a review site or category for your blog or website and write reviews. You can review both products and services, as long as they’re related to your niche topic. Reviews are tremendously valuable to people considering a purchase. And when they’re reading reviews it means that they’re already in a buying state of mind.

Most likely they’ve decided they want to make a purchase, they just haven’t settled on a company or specific product. You can help them take that last step by providing an informative review. A note about writing good reviews – make sure they appear unbiased. If your review reads like a sales page then your reader isn’t going to trust it.

#2 Product Demonstrations

If you are an affiliate for one or more products, consider creating videos that offer product demonstrations. These demonstrations work a lot like reviews. They help your prospects and website visitors take that final step from researching to buying. And of course you have the link to help them out! (Don’t forget to put your affiliate link in your video.)

#3 Comparison Charts

Have one or more similar products that you represent? Consider creating a comparison chart to help your prospects weigh the features and compare. And of course be sure to include links to all of the products you represent.

#4 Information Marketing

Give away free information like reports, checklists, workbooks, eBooks and even home study courses. Provide a wealth of information on your niche topic and casually promote relevant products within the body of the content. For example, if you have a pet care niche you can create a new puppy safety checklist. Relevant items on that checklist can be hyperlinked to retailers that sell those products. You provide value and earn a commission.

#5 Build an Email List

One of the best ways to earn more as an affiliate marketer is to build a reputation as someone that your prospects like and trust. You can accomplish this by creating an email list and regularly connecting with your subscribers. Share links and information with them. You’ll generate sales and earn the kind of commission you’ve been striving for.

Making money as an affiliate marketer is often about knowing your prospect and providing them with the information and experience they are looking for. It’s about content. The more quality content you can offer your readers, the more commission you’re likely to earn.

1. Come Up With the Core Concept

The core idea behind your viral campaign should be something that’s completely unique. Or it can be a twist on an extremely popular idea.

It helps to know your audience really well to come up with these ideas. Playing off existing memes can really help viral campaigns take off.

2. Know the Viral Space

What tends to go viral? As a rule of thumb, things that are really shocking, funny, interesting or unique can really go viral. Also, things that are geek-funny can do very well on Reddit and Digg.

If you don’t regularly visit sites like Reddit, Digg and StumbleUpon, start doing so right away. It’s the only way you’ll truly understand what your audience is looking for.

3. Plan Your Distribution

Before you create your content, plan where you want to distribute it.

Are you going to put it on StumbleUpon? On Digg? On Reddit? On YouTube?

There are specific strategies you can employ with each strategy to try to get more exposure. For example, StumbleUpon’s paid stumble system works quite well, while Reddit’s still needs some work.

On some systems, buying a high reputation account to post your content from can dramatically increase your chances of ranking.

4. Creating Your Content

Create your content. Put a lot of time, energy and attention into the actual content piece. It’s more important than anything else, including strategy planning.

If possible, try to create your content in such a way that there can be a Part 2. That way you can easily piggyback off a successful campaign.

Try not to brand your first run. Don’t put your logo on your infographics and don’t put your brand in your YouTube videos. Instead, come back and add them in later. Self-promotion is very much frowned upon in social bookmarking communities.

5. The Launch!

Launch your viral campaign and keep a very, very close eye on it. A lot of opportunities can float by if you’re not keeping tabs on it.

Anytime someone links to you, send them a “Thank You” note. Start to build a relationship with them. Don’t just get that one link from them; it can easily turn into many more links.

Watch your server closely. If you hit the front page of Reddit or Digg, you can literally receive 100,000+ hits in a few hours. That can easily crash shared hosting, VPS hosting and even dedicated servers.

If you watch your launch carefully and maximize your returns while minimizing problems, provided you have good content, you stand a good chance of going viral.

Here are some of the most important factors that drive word-of-mouth advertising.

a) Something That’s Really, Really Different

If something is really, truly different, people are going to talk about it. Things that have never been done before are hot topics of conversation.

Whether it’s a new buffet restaurant in town or the iPhone 5 release – if it’s new and unconventional, people are going to talk about it.

What if your product isn’t 100% original? You can still do something unique. For example, a cake company isn’t anything new, but one cake company generated a lot of buzz by baking the largest cake in the world.

b) Extraordinary Human Interactions

Another thing that tends to drive word-of-mouth marketing is human interactions.

When someone spilled coffee on an executive’s suit on a Southwest Airline’s flight and a flight attendant offered his own suit so the man could go to his meeting well dressed, the story spread like wildfire throughout the internet.

Another example is a restaurant whose waiters are constantly insulting customers. It’s their brand. It’s actually funny and customers go to this restaurant just for the unique experience.

The examples go on and on. Out of the ordinary human interactions drive word of mouth.

c) “I Think Person XYZ Will Really Like This”

Another core thing that drives word of mouth is the “I really think Susie will love this” mentality.

Friends are always on the lookout for friends. If your product, service, article or blog post is really written so it will help other people out, chances are friends will pass it along to friends.

Try to create content or products that’ll appeal to different kinds of people that still have a common thread. For example, if you have a website about making money on the internet, create content that’ll appeal to both freelancers and internet entrepreneurs.

d) Different Formats

Different people like to share different kinds of things.

Some people like to share and talk about contests. Others like to share and talk about videos. Still others love funny graphics, while others will only share strictly educational material they think friends will love.

Don’t just appeal to one kind of person. Create your word-of-mouth marketing so that it will appeal to a wide range of people.

These are some of the main factors that drive word-of-mouth advertising. Word of mouth can absolutely be planned. You don’t have to hit all of the hot buttons discussed above, but to succeed you should aim to hit at least one or two of them.

Here are four smart ways of engaging potential customers online.

#1 Games/Applications

Many businesses are realizing the value of creating a useful application for a mobile device. They’re not charging for the application and by making it available for free they’re engaging new potential customers.

For example, an information site on coffee makers might create a mobile application that helps buyers buy the right coffee. A professional coach might create an application that helps users create their vision of the ideal business. These applications don’t have to cost much to create either.

#2 Quizzes and Questionnaires

For some reason we all love filling out questionnaires and taking quizzes. We like to share our opinion and we like to see where we rank against our peers. You can engage your potential customers online by publishing fun and/or interesting quizzes. There are many services that enable you to publish a quiz on your blog or website for free. You can also glean a lot of valuable information about your prospects from these quizzes and surveys.

And don’t forget about social networking. There are thousands of quizzes on Facebook and it’s easy to create your own.

#3 User Feedback

Whenever you get user feedback, comments, or interesting information from your prospects and customers, share it with your audience. For example, if you receive a comment from a customer on Facebook, thank them for the comment. Publish it on your blog, website and/or email newsletter.

You might also consider publishing an article or blog post that relates to the comment. When you embrace your feedback you begin to build a community. Your prospects feel as if you’re listening to them and responding. It’s quite powerful.

#4 Ask Questions

Start engaging your audience both on your blog and via social networking, but also ask questions. Ask them what their biggest problem is. Ask them what they think about the latest controversy. Ask them how you can help them live a better life? Ask what makes them feel happy and fulfilled.

Asking questions won’t guarantee that you always get an abundance of responses, but people will take notice. They will respond and you will engage. You’ll also learn a lot about your audience.

Why?

1. The Very Basics: How Is Your Website Doing?

If you don’t even track the rudimentary things, such as how much traffic your website is getting, how many people are coming back to your website after leaving and other basic metrics, you’ll have no idea how your website is doing at all.

If your website is starting to get serious traffic, that means an opportunity to make money. If you don’t have tracking installed, you won’t know when that happens.

In addition to the basics, there are a lot of other benefits of tracking some of the more advanced metrics.

2. Using Metrics to Rank Well in Search Engines

With the Panda update, Google has publically stated that they’re using visitor metrics much more heavily now in their ranking algorithms.

That means that pages where people stay longer will tend to rank higher. Pages where users click and then never come back to Google also rank higher, as that probably means they found the answer to their question on your site. Pages which users don’t bounce from and instead go to other pages on your site will rank higher.

These are just a fraction of the metrics Google is now considering in their ranking algorithm. If you want your website to rank, you need to be consistently monitoring things like return rate, bounce rate and exit rate to improve them over time.

3. Tracking Performance to Immediately Improve Cashflow

Some metrics may not immediately improve your bottom line. Improvements in other metrics, however, can immediately improve your cashflow.

For example, what’s your current visitor to email sign-up rate? What’s your email to conversion rate?

By tracking these two metrics, you can immediately add more cash to your bottom line. More importantly, any improvements you make to these metrics will last over time, paying off for months and years.

4. Improving the Non-Tangibles of Your Business

How useful are people finding your website? How many people feel like your site is resourceful enough that they come back? How many people post things from your site to their Facebook status?

These are metrics that won’t necessarily add to your bottom line right away. However, they’ll result in more links, more visitors and more community goodwill. In the long run, that’ll turn into more visitors and more cash.

These are some of the many reasons you should be tracking the performance of your website. Without good tracking, you’re essentially flying blind. By tracking and measuring your metrics, you’ll be able to refine and improve your website over time.

There are actually many ways you can reach your potential customers through smartphones and other mobile devices.

#1 Social networking – Social networking isn’t just for the laptop or desktop computer anymore. You can connect with your prospects whether you’re out and about or they are. In fact, consider creating interactions where you encourage your prospects to connect with you from their mobile devices. Ask them to upload photos or to post status updates when they’re out.

#2 Group texting – Instead of, or in addition to, asking people to subscribe to your email list, ask them to sign up to receive text messages. You then have their permission to connect via text. Consider your audience and the type of message subscription service you can create. For example, if you’re a personal coach you might send motivational or inspirational quotes to your subscribers each morning.

#3 Make your website mobile ready – Have you ever noticed that some websites look terrible on your smartphone and others look excellent? This is because of the technology they’re using. You can make a few small changes and have a mobile ready website or blog. Once it’s ready to go, promote it. Ask people to view your site on their mobile device and share their experience.

#4 Blog – You can record video posts from your mobile device and instantly post on your blog and/or YouTube. You can also write blog posts using a blogging application for your smartphone.

#5 Games and downloads – Consider offering mobile technology to your prospects. You can create an application or a game that they can download for free. Ringtones are one type of download. However, you can also offer documents and videos.

In addition to the many ways you can reach your audience through mobile devices and smartphones, there are ways you can monetize the experience too – for example, by using AdSense for Mobile. As the technology continues to grow and improve, there’s no doubt that more opportunities to market via mobile devices will continue too.

Here are a few ways to create buzz for your small business.

1. Feature a Big Name

Can you get a big name on an interview? If so, you can generate a lot of buzz. Go to national networking events in your industry to meet well-known individuals and see if they’d be willing to be interviewed.

One great example of this is the Learning Annex. Before landing Donald Trump as a guest speaker, they were earning less than $1 million a year. The Learning Annex’s founder took a big bet when he offered Trump $1 million dollars to speak.

That day, they packed more than 10,000 in the audience when they’d never had more than 2,000 before. Today they have many millions every year.

2. Appear on a Radio Show

Come up with a controversial topic or stance and market yourself to radio show hosts.

Post an ad in the Radio Television Interview Report (RTIR), the main place where show hosts go to look for experts.

Call up local stations and offer to be interviewed about whatever topic you want.

The spicier you can make whatever it is you’re seeking publicity for, the better. Try to come up with an exciting angle.

3. Throw a Party or Event

In Silicon Valley, there’s a small start-up whose founder knows just about every big name in the valley. This CEO isn’t a millionaire, yet he knows many of the millionaires in the area.

How does he do it? Simple – twice a year, he throws a giant boat party. He invites all the biggest names in Silicon Valley. The big names come because they know the other big names will be there.

By being the organizer, he generates a lot of buzz for his company and generates a lot of connections.

How can you do something similar in your industry? How can you throw a unique party or event that’ll get people talking? Google does it by having big name bands playing for their staff. Of course, you can also do it without spending a lot of money just by getting creative.

These are just a few ways you can create buzz around your small business. Generating buzz takes a bit of creativity, but it also takes the willingness to act and put yourself out there. Come up with a few different ideas and take action on the most audacious ones. Those are often the most likely to succeed.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Both individuals and companies have mastered the process of systematically creating a viral buzz, to the point where they can just about engineer a viral campaign from scratch at any time.

Creating a viral buzz is an art, but it’s also in large part a science. Here are the most important components of creating a viral buzz.

1. Do Something Completely Off the Wall

Things that are interesting get “likes.” Things that are completely off the wall, completely out of the blue and completely original actually get shared and reposted.

The things that tend to go viral tend to be edgy and mildly not politically correct. If your brand supports that kind of marketing, you’ll have to consciously decide whether you’re willing to take the risk by launching these kinds of campaigns.

2. Write Down Your Crazy Ideas

Once you start thinking about wacky viral marketing ideas, you’ll probably start having ideas left and right.

It’s really important that you write these ideas down quickly and keep them all in one place.

It’s very hard to hold more than one good idea in your head at any one time. If you have three great ideas, chances are at least one will get left in the dust.

Write all your promotion ideas down, even if you won’t actually act on them for a few months.

3. The Viral Launching Pad

For a viral campaign to take off, you need to have a base of people who start using your product.

While nobody actually knows how many people need to see your site for it to have a chance to go viral, most viral marketing experts estimate it at more than 1,000 people but less than 10,000 people.

So how do you get 1,000+ people to see your viral campaign?

Of course, the easiest way is to have an existing user base. But what if you don’t?

The easiest way is to just pay for the traffic. High traffic blogs will usually be willing to make a guest post for a few hundred dollars. You could even just put up some AdWords campaigns. At $0.25 per click, 1,000 people will cost you just $250 to take a shot at launching a viral campaign.

If you have your viral launching pad of 1,000 to 10,000 people and you have a completely off-the-wall idea that people in the industry have never seen before, you’ll have a very good chance of getting a lot of exposure.

Freebies

Everyone enjoys a good freebie. When you provide your customers with regular value that costs them nothing, not even their email address, they really start to feel appreciated. They also start to truly appreciate you too. Freebies can come in the form of promotional offers like a BOGO (buy one get one).

You can also share free downloads and information. It’s more than offering free content. Offer free downloads too. Think about reports, videos, checklists, comparison charts, workbooks, and lists. Help your customer by providing extra value for free.

Superior Customer Service

Over deliver when it comes to customer service. Provide them with an exceptional customer service experience and make sure the experience is consistent. Each time you interact with a customer – whether it is on a social networking site, via telephone or email or face to face – make sure they know how much you appreciate them.

How? Create systems that support a great experience. Autoresponders can ensure each customer email is acknowledged in a timely manner. Apparent policies and procedures and a FAQ page can help ensure customers can easily find answers to their questions. And a friendly, polite, and welcoming communication can reinforce your customer service vision.

Quality!

Make sure everything you do is done to the best of your ability. Always put forth quality information, products and services. Quality matters. It not only helps you earn customer love; it also helps build credibility and authority in your industry. People will share the good news about you and your business. You’ll receive referrals and recommendations. It’s one of the best ways to build a business.

Create high expectations for yourself and your business. Then rise up to the challenge to meet them. Provide an exceptional customer service experience. Give your customers a steady supply of no cost value, and take steps to ensure each and every product or service you deliver or represent is top notch.

Treat your customers like you want to be treated and you’ll be well on your way to building a loyal and loving customer list. They’ll buy from you more often. They’ll refer you to others and they’re the best people to work with. Loving customers make being a business owner worthwhile.