Is free really the new economy? Chris Anderson seems to think so - “we are entering an era when free will be seen as the norm, not an anomaly.” The assumption that free means we don’t pay for anything is not entirely accurate. You see, we are still paying, but just with a different currency. If you live in the United States and travel abroad to Europe, you are not getting everything for free because you’re paying with Euros. The currency has simply been converted.

Such is the case with what Chris Anderson calls “freeconomics.” Instead of paying with money, we are now going to paying with attention, which is more valuable than money in my opinion. Is Google really giving away Gmail? Not quite. They are not “giving” away anything, they are investing. They are spending money to get your attention, and they have it. The same goes for Yahoo with their free unlimited e-mail storage space. Are they paying for it? You bet they are. Are we paying for it? Well that depends on whether or not Yahoo! got your attention when they made their grand “free” announcement.

It may seem that companies are giving things away for free, but ask yourself this, each time a company offers to give you something for “free” is the company getting your attention? What would happen if every company started giving things away? You want a new computer? Here you go. You want an Ipod? Here you go. Do you think these companies will continue to grow and profit? Absolutely not.

There are two currencies now, attention and money. In order for companies to continue to grow and become successful, they need to find a balance between the two.

So the question is, how are you going to get your customers attention?

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Just came back from the Google VIP party and I must say, it was great. After attending events like these, you start believe that Google is not a search engine - it’s really a relationship management platform. Matthew Dolan, the relationship manager for the National Agency Team, was eager to speak with myself and my co-workers before we even got there. As soon as I walked in and introduced myself to someone, they immediately said, “Matt was talking about you and, he’s looking forward to meeting you.” Now that is called building and maintaining a relationship. Great job Matthew and thanks to you and Google for hosting a great event.

The event was held at Sino in San Jose, a very nice restaurant with great food and drinks. Google really made everyone there feel like a VIP.

I met a lot of smart and interesting people and engaged in an interesting discussion with David Szetela, the owner and CEO of Clix Marketing, a PPC firm based in Kentucky. Of course, David believes that PPC is better than SEO, and he did make some valid points. PPC does have greater accountability and allows for the targeting of specific landing pages per keyword - if you use dynamic landing pages that is. His argument was that SEO IS PPC, but for natural search. This rings true to a certain extent.

While PPC is restricted to specifically search engine advertising, SEO can be applied across a wide spectrum of marketing channels, such as PDF’s, videos, blogs, etc. I believe a chasm exists between the different types of SEO, and I’m not talking about black hat vs white hat. There are SEO’s who seek to “game” the system. They believe in driving traffic and in ranking in that top coveted spot on search engines and see SEO as just a rankings tool. They are the ones who spam social media sites just to get some extra links, and these are the guys who stuff keywords in their title tags to try to rank for as many search terms as they can. This is not SEO. This is spam marketing.

On the other hand, we have SEOs who believe in SEO as a marketing tool. That is, instead of worrying about traffic, they focus on conversions and on targeting the people that matter. SEO spam is equivalent to t.v. advertising - a lot of money spent and not a lot of results delivered. SEO is about delivering a consistent marketing message via multiple channels to the people that care and to the people that matter. Why was the Youtube series “you suck at photoshop,” so popular? Why do millions of people watch the CEO of Blendtec blend random products in his blenders? It’s not because of spam and it’s not because of SEO. It’s because these guys targeted the right people, and those people did the rest of the marketing. I consider myself a marketer not a spammer.

I know you are waiting for me to say that SEO is better than PPC, but I am not going to. Instead of saying that either PPC or SEO is better I will say that they work well together and can share their learnings. In order to dominate search, you have to have a solid understanding of PPC and SEO, and you need to understand how they can work together to provide an overall integrated approach to search marketing.

Thanks for the great party Google, and thank you, David, for engaging me in this lively discussion of PPC vs SEO.

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There is a video series on YouTube called “You Suck at Photoshop.” In these video tutorials Donnie walks through a few tips and tricks in Photoshop. Nothing special, right? Wrong, these videos collectively, have a few million views. All these people tune in just to watch someone tinker around with Photoshop for 3 minutes.

It turns out that Donnie’s videos are unique. Each particular tutorial is based on a story, for example; Donnie broke up with his wife and now wants to place his wedding ring on eBay. He then creates a tutorial on how to make an attractive picture of his wedding ring. Once the picture is finished, he puts the ring up on eBay. But wait! Donnie changes his mind, he wants to keep the ring, but alas it is too late, the ring is now displayed on eBay for all to see. This is one example (of many) of how Donnie interweaves a story into his Photoshop tutorials.

Donnie was able to capture 2 markets, the Photoshop tutorial market, and the “I want a funny video,” market. It doesn’t matter if you know how to use Photoshop, you will still laugh at his tutorials and find yourself engaged in his stories.

Now, imagine if Adobe had made those videos. In less than a year, Adobe would have millions of people watching their videos, learning about Photoshop and wanting to buy their products, do you think sales would increase? You betcha they would. Large companies throw some of their old video content on sites such as Youtube and then complain that nobody is watching their videos, well just because you throw up a video on Youtube doesn’t mean people are going to watch it.

So what are some of the key ingredients for creating successful viral marketing videos (or other viral marketing content in general)?

• tell a story
• make something entertaining
• make sure whatever you create has spread-ability, meaning it’s easy to share/spread
• make something worth talking about
• use non-scripted content (or not obvious scripted content), save the scripted stuff for your corporate site
• scarcity is the new ubiquity, focus on your niche
• engage in the conversation with your viewers/searchers/etc.
• start the process by telling your friends/family/co-workers, utilize sites like digg, mixx, etc. to jump start the conversation
• ask for feedback
• listen to feedback
• change it up, sure your stuff may be great one month, but eventually it will get boring
• don’t make your content too long but don’t make it too short either, find a balance

Adobe currently has 9 videos uploaded on youtube, all uploaded within the past few months. Collectively only 2,791 people viewed these videos (they are about other Adobe products, non-photoshop). Compare that with the 209,349 people that viewed Donnie’s “You Suck at Photoshop #7,” video in just the past 2 days!

Here we have a multi-billion dollar corporation vs Donnie. One has access to virtually unlimited resources; the other makes videos from home. One has a multi million dollar marketing budget the other probably has a virtually non-existent marketing budget.

This is a great example of how some large corporations do not understand how to utilize social media marketing to their advantage. If I were Adobe, I would politely invite Donnie out to dinner and ask him for a few tips.

If you have any more items to add to my list please, let me know and I will amend the blogpost and give you full credit for your idea. As usual, I’d love to hear all of your ideas/comments/feedback. If you would like to see some of the “You Suck at Photoshop” videos I created a Squidoo Lens that houses all of them, enjoy!

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Recently, I sat in on a mobile technologies presentation from a prospective vendor. They (two gentlemen) seemed smart enough, after all, they were tech savvy Phd’s. I was impressed with their qualifications and was expecting a grade “A” presentation. Instead, what I got was a scene from “B” horror movie.

Apparently the gentlemen were from Finland, they had very heavy accents; I could not understand much of what they said. This immediately killed the presentation from the get-go. If you are an organization attempting to pitch a global mobile solution then you better have someone doing the presenting that can, well, present!

The slides were what I like to call BaB slides (boring and bulleted), I was not about to sit there and read through all of their information. The goal behind a presentation is to demonstrate your knowledge and expertise in a particular field while educating the audience and pitching your idea. Your audience is not dumb, don’t make them read your bulleted lists, and if you’re the presenter you shouldn’t be reading through your bulleted lists either. You probably don’t want to use a generic Power Point template, we’ve all seen them and we don’t want to see them again, they are dull, boring, uninteresting, and sleep-inducing mechanisms of doomed presentations. Your presentations should reflect your messaging and your product. A presentation is just another marketing tool, BRAND IT and make it your own! If your product/service/technology/etc. is exciting, then your presentation and method of delivery should be more exciting.

To top things off, in the middle of the presentation one of the two gentlemen received a phone call and then proceeded to answer it in the middle of the presentation, mumbling to the person on the other end that “he was in a meeting.” What kind of a message does that send to me? Here I am giving up an hour of my day to listen to these guys pitch me their idea, and the guy pauses to answer his phone. I don’t have the attention span or the time to listen to you on your phone and neither does anybody else.

These guys may have had a great product, but they just couldn’t sell it. Most people think that great technology will market and sell itself, guess what, that’s not true. Great technology doesn’t mean anything if I don’t understand what it does, how to use it, or how it can benefit my organization.

Who is doing your presenting?

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I was washing my hands in the restroom at LAX (flying back to San Francisco) when I noticed something on the back of my boarding pass. I flipped it over and saw a coupon for Papa John’s Pizza. This was the first time I have seen (or noticed) a coupon on the back of a boarding pass. The offer was for two free coke products with any purchase of an extra large specialty pizza ONLINE SPECIAL ONLY.

I began to wonder how many people actually noticed the coupon on the back of their boarding pass. My guess is not many. Furthermore, why would Papa John’s even bother advertising on the back of a boarding pass to begin with? How many people will even notice the coupon? Let alone actually keep the coupon to use when they arrive at their destination. People in airports are in a hurry, trying to get to their destination, scrambling to make their flight. They don’t care about coupons, they care about getting from point A to point B.

Let’s just say I saw the coupon and then decided “wow, I could really go for some Pizza right now.” Well guess what, there was no Papa John’s Pizza in the airport (at least not in the domestic section).

So there I was with a coupon for something I could not buy (even if I wanted to). I could have been ready to buy, with credit card in hand, but nobody to give the payment too. That meant that I would have to hang onto the coupon while waiting at the gate, take the coupon with me on the plane, and then make sure to bring the coupon home with me and purchase a pizza. Not likely.

If you spend money on marketing a product that nobody sees, than your product does not exist, why would you spend money to market something that does not exist?

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