It’s no secret that online video is one of the most powerful marketing mediums on the planet.

Creating your first however, can be a huge challenge. After all, there’s shyness to overcome,  technical knowledge to learn and a reasonable amount of time commitment to make them look professional.  If you fall into that category,  all of your excuses are about to be swept from under your feet!  I’m about to show you a video branding tool that is super fast and easy to use, that will skyrocket your credibility.  It’s called Google Search Stories Video Creator and you’ll find it on YouTube.

In under 5 minutes this powerful little gem will allow you to create a video from Google’s search results all about you.  You can choose results from blogs, images, news and general search.  Choose your music, add a title and with the click of one button, your masterpiece is uploaded directly to YouTube! Imagine the boost to your credibility having a video that shows all of the Google search results on your brand.  But the power doesn’t end there…

Google Search Stories Video Creator is also a powerful way of telling a story.

As well as the obvious plus for your personal branding, you can also create stories around your affiliate products, your Network Marketing opportunity and just about anything else you can think of.  Rather than show you an example of a personal video, I decided to have some fun and create a video about the founders of my Tribe Community.

If you don’t want your Search Story to look like everyone elses, here’s how to stand out from the crowd and take your video to the next level.

Check out the updated video below compared to the first video and I think you’ll agree, the extra 8 seconds in length, makes a difference. Oh and just a tiny thing I forgot to mention…. By the time I woke up the next day, this video was ranked number 4 for the search term ‘Social Media Tribes’.  How cool is that for SEO 101!

Ok so lets dig in to how to create one!

This is getting slightly more technical but I promise it’s still easy, and will take you an extra 15 minutes.  You do want to stand out don’t you ;-)

• Take your newly created masterpiece and download it from YouTube to your computer.
• While logged into your YouTube account, click on my videos and find the Search Stories Video you just created.
• Now you should see Edit, Insight and a downward pointing drop down arrow.
• Click on this and select Download MP4

Now your masterpiece in the making is on your computer!

Next head over to OneTrueMedia and create a Premium account ($3.99 a month).

• Login and click on create.
• Go to add images and video clips and click upload photos and video.
• The next screen will say select files so choose the name of the file you just downloaded from Youtube.
• Repeat this step and upload a powerful graphic or logo that has to do with your message.
• Next ignore all the options to add music text etc and go straight to Edit & Sequence.  Now you will see your uploaded files.
• Make sure your graphic is before the video file and click directly on it.
• Leave all the properties as they are and click on effects.
• Choose an effect from the dropdown menu, save it and you’re almost done!

Final tip:  Download the video directly to your computer before uploading to Youtube as it removes the OneTrueMedia branding.

Now the reason we want to leave all the properties as they are and  just choose and apply an effect, is to save time. This is one of those cool services that have a million and one options but we don’t want to be there fluffing around all day!  If you like the effect I chose, it’s called Metropolis.

If you’ve made your own Search Story, make sure you come back and post your link in the comments, I’d love to see it.  Did you think the extra time spent over at One True Media was worth the effort?  Post a comment below and let me know your thoughts on this incredibly simple, yet powerful tool.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, tribe syndication, video marketing

If you’ve ever questioned the value of being involved with an online Tribe Syndication community that generates activity for your site, think again!

The latest update to Googles indexing alogorithim, otherwise known as the ‘Caffeine Update’ has now made ‘activity’ more important than ever before.

Here is a snippet from Google ‘s official announcement:  “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before”.

So essentially, including ‘fresher results’ now means that Google is indexing social activity such as Twitter, Facebook, comments etc at lightening speed.

Over the last few months I’ve watched top affiliate marketers make it to the first page of Google (and even hit # 1) for their keyword in under a week.  Guess what their secret has been?  An intricate combination of activity!

Here are a few of their secrets to getting first page rankings…

Generating link activity to their site by commenting on other high PR sites, waiting for the comment to be approved and then ‘pinging’ the search engines to let them know there’s been ‘activity’ on the site through services such as http://pingoat.net .

Writing 10 ‘keyword’ specific articles and submitting them to a powerful combination of social networking sites, article sites and social bookmarking sites.  Followed by pinging the newly created URL’s and then creating rss feeds.  Submitting the feeds to the top feed aggregators.  (This was all done in a specific, well planned order).

If all this pinging and submitting sounds confusing, don’t worry it was for me too!  The above strategy seemed quite complex at first until finally the penny dropped.  It all boiled down to ‘activity’!  Of course these guys were expert affiliate marketers and so they had their sites correctly optimized for their keywords but…  A significant part of their first page results came from a calculated amount of pinging, comments etc that all led to letting Google know their site was alive and kicking!

Whilst relevant quality backlinks still remain an important factor, ‘freshness’ of content has never been more important. And guess what counts as fresh content on your blog…  If you guessed comments, you’re correct.

If you don’t have a high traffic site that ‘organically’ creates lots of activity, RSS subscribers, pings etc, the way to get the big Google bot’s attention is to join an online tribe community that creates the activity for you.  Imagine how much more powerful the above strategies could have been for these guys if they had a tribe submitting their content to 43 social bookmarking sites using powerful tools like Onlywire.

So how can a tribe leverage from Google’s Caffeine Update?

If you’re a part of an online tribe community, no doubt you’ve already witnessed some pretty amazing results for your personal blog.  Now imagine taking these results and catapulting your marketing efforts into the stratosphere, by creating a specialized ‘content pinging’ tribe within your community.  So instead of just concentrating on your blog, they use Onlywire to ping your Ezine articles, your hubs, your lenses, your opportunity reviews etc etc.  Now thats what I call powerful!  In fact in the age of Google ‘caffeine’, you’d be crazy not to brainstorm ideas on forming more advanced marketing tribes within your community.  I know I will be after this post :)

If you have any thoughts to add on the recent changes to Google’s indexing algorithm, I’d love to hear from you in the comments section below.  I’d also love to hear what kind of advanced strategies you’re using within your tribe.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: blog traffic, blogging, michaele harrington, online tribes

Have you noticed there’s a ‘tribal’ buzz happening out there on the Social Networking sites lately?

If you haven’t, I’m going to sum up the benefits in one short sentence…

Put simply, having your own Social Media Tribe = A massive amount of free traffic and eyeballs on your content.

Unless you’ve been online for a while or are an SEO expert, you would have noticed it’s not easy to get your content out there.  You know the feeling… You’ve created your masterpiece, installed the latest cool Social Media plugin to make it easy for people to syndicate and a week later your little tweetmeme button painfully sits at the grand total of 1.  Thanks Mum!  Your blog is like ghost town and the few visitors you’re getting are probably being scared away by the lack of ‘social proof’.

Last year after dedicating every spare moment into squeezing in just about every course I could on Social Media Marketing, there was still something critical missing….  If you listened really closely, you could just about hear the tumbleweeds rolling down my blog.  Not good!

ENTER: SOCIAL MEDIA TRIBES AND BLOGGING ALLIANCE TO THE RESCUE!

Ok so at the end of last year, I hooked up with 5 Ghost Busters (aka Social Media leaders), who banished those tumbleweeds, scared off the ghosts and replaced them with a raving bunch of cheerleaders.

Having your own Social Media Tribe is like a mini mastermind group of like minded people who all syndicate each others content.  So instead of promoting your own stuff (which you want to keep to a minimum anyway), your Tribe does all the syndicating!

Here is how it works…

First you want to find 4 or 5 other people who are at a similar stage to you in implimenting Social Media.

You then set up a ‘Tribe Power Hour’ on skype once a week.

From there, you go through all of each others social networking profiles and start a frenzy of activity.  You add comments to their latest blog posts, share them on Facebook, Retweet them, rate videos on Youtube and tag each other having loads of fun.  I can tell you from experience that when a bunch of people are out there stirring up fun, people come from everywhere wanting to join in :)

So once you’ve teamed up with a mini mastermind group who each have a few thousand followers on Twitter and a few hundred friends/fans on Facebook, your content is suddenly being sent out to tens of thousands of people.  Did I mention this is all in the space of an hour?  Now thats leverage!  Guess what happens after this?  EVERYTHING suddenly comes alive and your traffic goes through the roof!  It’s like the Law of Reciprocity on steroids!

Of course you still need to be producing content and actively engaging in conversation but no matter what industry you’re in, this is a hugely powerful strategy.

I only learned about the concept 8 weeks ago when I partnered up with 5 guys who had created (in my mind) the ‘perfect’ Social Media Tribe.  Why perfect?  Because each one of them had a specialized area of knowledge on different aspects of the Social Networking sites.  There were some cutting edge strategies and funky plugins that I never even knew existed that really took things to the next level.

More about some of these ‘stand out from the crowd’ strategies in my next post.

How about you, do you have a Tribe of cheerleaders on the Social sites yet?  Have you thought about using a content syndication ‘power hour’ for maximum leverage?

If you have any questions or stories to share, I’d love to hear from you.

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, social media, social networking, tribe mastermind formula, tribe tuesday

Have you ever walked up to a complete stranger, asked for their Twitter and Facebook profiles, waited politely for 5 minutes and then started shouting at them?  If you ever feel tempted, please give me a call first so I can save you from being detained by the men in white coats :)

Well I don’t know where these men in white coats are hanging out these days but I reckon they could make a killing scooping up abnormally behaved people on the Social Networking sites!

I made a new Facebook friend today and I thought (as we probably have some similar interests) that you might have met him, or one of his friends too…

“Dear Michaele (okay let us pronounce it Mikayla!) happy!!
First of all thanks for your message.
Other than my regular assignment, I am presently focussing on one internet online business right from my Laptop. And that is XYZ Company. I hope u might have heard about it.  If not, then hurry, dont waste even a single minute.  Just go and check this link of my website
http://www.facebook.com/xyz
Yeah truly speaking it is an amazing business opportunity available as on date.  Never seen and never heard such an opportunity. Oh my GOD! when I first time heard about it, I did not take a second to jump on it and grab.  Now it is mine, my own business and forever mine.
Hey by the way why dont u just check, take a tour, watch the video presentation and if you have any question, come back to me.
lo!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot to wish u a very happy new year 2010.
May this new year bring you and your family a lot of wealth and good health.
Sincerely Yours”

I know, I know, it must be because my profile says “desperately seeking new opportunity;  complete strangers, anti relationship marketers, all welcome to submit ” lol.  Maybe not!

Aside from these types of messages being mildly annoying/amusing *sigh*, if you’re in Network Marketing you feel a deeper sense of wanting to educate.

I used to try politely educating via 140 character DM’s on Twitter but there’s nothing like the power of a video.

Have you ever been hanging out on one of your favorite Social Media sites only to be rudely interrupted by someone shouting at you?

If so, I would love to hear your thoughts on how we can bring people up to speed on the power of building relationships online.

Shout/spam me a comment below :)

Michaelé

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, Network Marketing, social networking

» By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers….

» 96% of them have joined a social network

» If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest

» The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females

» Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…

» In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen

» The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

» Because of the speed in which social media enables communication, word of mouth now becomes world of mouth

» 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations…Only 14% trust advertisements

» 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.

If some of those stats surprised you, its gets better… Social Media has now overtaken porn as the number 1 activity on the web.

This is probably one of the most profound developments in business since email and what’s exciting, is it has completely levelled the communication playing field. Never before is history, have we seen Joe Citizen having the ability to connect directly with Authors, Celebrities, Politicians and Centres of influence in our niche. Social Media gives us the opportunity to create powerful relationships FAST.

These days our potential prospects and customers are not only being met through traditional channels like work, hobbies and business networking events, they’re hanging out at places like Twitter, Facebook and Youtube, in their hundreds of millions! With Facebook surpassing 350 million users, do you think some of these people might be interested in working with you?

I thought so!

The big question is, can any of these millions of people find you right now? People are out there every day having conversations about your company, your products and your industry, Doesn’t it make sense to join in on these conversations?  After all, they are happening -with or without you!

“In the near future we will no longer search for products and services they will find us via social media…”

The most powerful way to create relationships and increase your warm market through the Social Networking sites is to remember it’s not about you; it’s about providing value to the world so that people are drawn to connect with you. Although you already know you have the most amazing home business opportunity on the planet, people aren’t interested in your opportunity, they’re interested in how you can solve the current problems they face.

Most people don’t yet understand how powerful it is to add Social Media as a business strategy.  This is largely because they fail to understand the time it takes to build relationships.  It’s not a Spam fest!  Your success on the social sites will be directly related to how much value you bring to the table and how many people you help.

A well-known online marketer gave a great analogy using the “Party Principle”. When you go to a party, do you meet someone for the first time and the moment you’re introduced say “Hey, I have this amazing opportunity and we’re currently looking for people just like you, here’s my card, when can we talk”. If you did, you’d probably be looked at as a raving lunatic and the chances of that person ever wanting to speak to you again just went out the door.  Hmm, a free lifetime entry into the NFL (No Friends Left) is a likely outcome of that strategy!   Think of dating.  If you suggested it was time to meet your parent’s after a first date, you’d likely send the person running a mile!

The same applies to the social networking sites, people are primarily there to socialize, make genuine connections and find useful information.  They might be open to hearing about what you do once they “know, like and trust” you.   We’re in a relationship marketing business, so if your not skilled at building relationships first offline, then this is going to show up online. In fact, your lack of skill will be magnified due to the larger audience.

You can’t just jump onto Twitter and Facebook and hunt down people to Spam your opportunity link to, yet thousands of Network Marketers are out there every day doing exactly that. If you haven’t spent time building the relationship, you haven’t yet ‘earned’ the right to market to that person.

“Successful companies in social media act more like Dale Carnegie, Listening first, selling second”

Your success in Social Media will be directly proportionate to the amount of time you’ve spent on developing your ‘people skills’ offline.

How about you, do you think Social Media will change the way we market and communicate?

Do you think there is really any difference in the way we should market online vs offline?

Join in on the conversation and post your thoughts/comments below.

(Stay tuned for part 2 on getting started with Social Media).

P.S. Many thanks to @equalman for permission to use the stats from his awesome video.

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, personal branding, social media, twitter

You might have heard of Follow Friday or even seen the #FollowFriday hashtag flying about the Twittosphere, anywhere from Thursday through to Sunday, but did you know there is such a thing as #FF etiquette?

Follow Friday started with one tweet by @Micah in mid January which read:  ”I am starting Follow Fridays”.  ”Every Friday, suggest a person to follow, and everyone follow him/her”.  ”Today its @fancyjeffrey & @wiredone “.  Micah stated, “I started #followfriday to highlight our friends we are proud of”.

Since #FF developed an almost cult like participation, I’ve noticed a growing trend of people sending a bunch of tweets simply listing bulk names like this:  @joeblog @maryjoe @janesmith @friend4 @friend5 @friend6 #FollowFriday.

I don’t know about you but I would be unlikely to want to follow someone just because they were one of a bunch of names.  At the very least it shows that you are not recommending anyone in particular for any valuable reason and at worst, this can come across as spam!

So what is the most effective way to use Follow Friday?

Just like paying someone a compliment through using the Retweet, the same goes for Follow Friday.  Pay the person a compliment by giving people a reason to follow them.

Instead of (@friend1 follow this great person #FollowFriday) or  (@friend1 @Friend2 etc #FF).

Simply recommend one friend at a time with something like (@friend1 provides simple, fun tips for growing your Network Marketing business through Facebook groups #FollowFriday).  Or  (@friend2 she has been an absolute inspiration with her awesome blogging secrets #FollowFriday).  If you’re really wanting to create a relationship with a particular person, try including a URL to one of their recent blog posts.

Being generous with your Tweets will reward you enormously, The Law of Reciprocity guarantees it!

I have to admit that one of the reasons I was late to the #FF party, was come Friday, I found I just didn’t have time to go through all my Twitter pages to check who had recently mentioned me in a Tweet etc that I wanted to return the favor too.  Well recently, I found a really cool tool that solves that problem: The Twitter Tag Project

Basically you just enter your Twitter username and it will scan your last 200 Tweets for names of people you’ve had contact with and display the results like this:  #FollowFriday @friend1 @friend2 @friend3.

Although I don’t recommend using the ‘tweet this’ feature  for Follow Friday, what I love about this site is that with the push of a button, it will show you who you’ve had mentions from or interaction with in a simple, one page format.

If you have any fun, simple Follow Friday tips, feel free to post your comments below.

Catch you on Friday @Michaele_H :-)

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, social media, twitter

Social Media has literally changed the Network Marketing industry for ever and you definitely don’t want to miss out.

So lets talk about Social Media, why it’s important to start using it now and what benefits it has to offer Network Marketers.

Technorati Tags: attraction marketing, michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, renegade university, social media

1.  Attraction: What will initially attract followers are your tweets. So go post at least 5 to 10 updates before you go following anyone. We don’t want your new followers turning up to a blank page! Interestingly you will still get followers if your page is blank but they are probably the kinda followers you want to steer clear of.

2.  Credibility: Sorry guys a picture of your pet gold fish and a name like MLM2009 just isn’t going to cut the mustard.  You’re out there to socialize, so treat it like you would any ‘offline’ social arena.  When you go to a party, you don’t put a paper bag over your head and introduce yourself as MLM2009.  I think you get my drift..

3.  Relationships: As with the party scenario, if someone wanted to get to know you and asked what you do, you wouldn’t say ‘MLM expert’ or you would sound like a moron!  You also wouldn’t answer with a blank stare.  So the same thing applies to your bio.  Fill it in and make it interesting.

3.  Your Opportunity: Come on guys, sheesh EVERYONE including you hates spam.  So why the heck would you go out onto a social networking site and spam it with your opportunity all day long.  Do you really think people are sitting there just hoping that someone finally spams them with a good business opportunity!

4.  Contribution: Unless your name is Paris Hilton or Barak Obama, people aren’t really that interested in the fact that you just made a piece of toast.  Don’t get me wrong, if you really did just eat something fascinating or want to mention the restaurant you ate at, then that could be valuable content.  Otherwise, leave the mundane activities out of your tweets and save those for when you want to direct message your friends.  As far as what is considered ‘valuable’ to your followers, useful and interesting links are what’s hot.

5. Power Through Association: I got this tip from Guy Kawasaki. I’m going to call it the @guru tip! Send @ messages to the social media big dogs. These are the folks with a large number of followers and seem to be the opinion leaders (and perhaps even “heros”) of Twitter. They probably won’t answer you but that’s ok. The aim is to ‘appear’ like you have a relationship with them to enhance your credibility. The theory is “if she is tweeting @MrBigDog, she must be worth following”. It’s not who you know, it’s who ‘appears’ to know you. Apparently!  (BTW, when I sent a tweet to Guy Kawasaki, he replied! LOL)

6.  Protected updates: Unless your pic suddenly showed up on the ‘’Worlds most Wanted” list or you’re hiding from the KGB, don’t activate this function. Come on, you’re not that special are you!

7.  Etiquette: The greatest compliment you can pay anyone on Twitter is to RT (re-tweet) their Tweet. Do this when you have genuinely found someone’s Tweet interesting, funny or valuable, not just because everyone else is re-tweeting.

8.  Bankruptcy: Until you reach 2000 followers, don’t go following more than about 100 people a day. Twitter changes the rules regularly so you don’t want to trigger a ‘Mosey along now, this account has been suspended’!

9. The Terminator: This is possibly the most important piece of info you might read if you work for a company. Be careful what you Tweet. Tweeting “My boss is so dumb he doesn’t realize I’m building my online empire while he’s paying me to work!” might not be the smartest move. Remember the Cisco fiasco where 1 tweet screwed up a potential high paying job: http://ciscofatty.com/

10.  Who’s Who: My personal list of the top 10 ‘must follow’.

GuyKawasaki Well his name speaks for himself plus I gotta recommend him considering I used his tip!

JoelComm Author of Twitter Power and a Social Media Evangelist

DaveEvans Social Media Consultant and author of Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day.

MariSmith Dubbed the Pied Piper of the Online World by Fastcompany.  The ‘Queen’ of FaceBook.

PerryBelcher Seriously Bad Ass Marketer (his words) and also known as The ‘King’ of Youtube.

Mashable The hottest Twitter tips news and help around. Plus the best Social Media links online.

AskMrVideo Ask him any question on video production, literally.

RichSchefren Known as the ‘Guru’ to the internet guru’s.  Seriously kick butt free documents for online entrepreneur’s.

Technorati Tags: michaele harrington, mlm, Network Marketing, twitter