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This is the forth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

Just when you thought someone would never compare Google Analytics to Star Trek, I found this. I would never consider myself a Trekkie, but this is a neat presentation. Information is key on the Internet, and the more you know the better you can market yourself or your product. Speaker Matt Bailey talks about gathering and analyzing that information through Google Analytics. Email subscribers can watch by clicking listen to marketers.

This is the forth day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

By now, you are probably wonder where in the world am I coming up with all of these different topics and ideas. If not, I will tell you anyways. I set up a few different Google Alerts and have been digging through them for little gems of info to pass along.

I believe videos will continue to gain major ground as Internet speeds increase and more people figure out how to upload their videos easily to sites like YouTube. With that in mind, here is a good tip for marketing your videos:

The first thing that you have to determine is where you are going to post the videos that you are making for your products and services. Some different places that you can post your videos are on your blog, on your website, and on video hosting sites like YouTube.

The point is that you want to have as many people as possible look at your video. You can also ask your online friends if they are willing to post your video on their blogs. There are places that are going to bring more results than others, and it’s a good idea to research which places are going to be the best for the results that you want.

You can read the rest here at Articlebiz.com

This is the second day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

Guest posts are a great way to introduce yourself or your product to a new audience. I believe any time someone asks if you are willing to do a guest post, you should jump at the chance. Yesterday, I did a guest post for Eric on Marketing.fm. If you would like to hear me talk about Social Network management you can head on over and check it out. Here is an excerpt:

The folks over at Ping.fm designed a site where you have the ability to update your status on dozens of different social networking sites. I use Gmail for just about everything and Ping.fm allows you to add its updater to your Google Chat list. So anytime I want to update my status, I click on the chat and type is my update. A second later I get a response that my status have been updated. If I were to log in to all the different accounts I have and manually update my status it would probably take 10-15 minutes (given I don’t get sidetracked being on those sites)…

Chances are if you live in a big city you are no stranger to high-speed police chases followed by a news helicopter and live commentary. Is it sad that the whole time I watched a chase on TV yesterday I was thinking I wish my website logo was on the roof?

I am not sure that I would necessarily want to be associated with a fleeing criminal, but it makes me think about different marketing strategies, hopefully without anyone going to jail for a long time. Not to mention that one time I was almost killed by some 16-year-old in minivan running from the cops. Thankfully I looked up and saw what was about to happen to the rear of my car. But I digress. There are legal and illegal ways to spread a message. I hope most go for the legal.

I don’t think anyone could ever condone running from the police unless you are part of the Gumball 3000. This is a cross country free-for-all that takes place once a year somewhere around the world. It happens about once every other year in the USA.

The Gumball 3000 is a combination of too many people with too much money Baha’in across the country as quick as they can in their upper-end sports cars. They also have a huge following (a Tribe). If you have ever seen them you would know because all 160 or so cars would be zooming by you at 100+ MPH on the interstate. Here is a clip of the 2006 Gumball.

The Gumball 3000 is an extreme example of a Tribe of people taking part in something they love, fast cars and parties. This originally started out as a recreation from the movie Cannonball Run where Burt Reynolds races an assortment of muscle cars across the country on the silver screen. Now the Gumball has taken on a life of its own with documentary crews and celebrities going along for the ride.

In order to participate in a Gumball rally you will need a fast car and lots of money (the car in the video was $60,000), not to mention gas and food (AAA extra).

The question I ask myself is how can I create a group of people like those Gumballers? Seems like the answer to that would be pretty simple:

• Focus on the thing everybody in that group loves (like fast cars and parties)
• Organize / lead the group into an idea (like starting a rally including the above)
• Have a way of separating them from others (the high cost of entry)
• Allow the merchandise to spread (stickers, shirts, videos, etc.)
• Rise and repeat

If you are running a business that has a core group of people who center around one thing, your goal should be is to enable those particular people to talk about and share that thing with others. Become a leader and an enabler. If people are buying your products, you already have the core thing needed to build a Tribe. Now it’s a matter of finding what they need, not what you want.

These are the responses to the second round of Ask Josh. Occasionally I open up the floor for people to ask whatever they feel like asking. I don’t think there will be any perfect answers, but you asked for my opinion, so I’m giving it ;). Here we go:

Sherry Asks: What webhosting are you using? Have you heard of Shann Host or Dotster ? What do you think of the webhosting that I just mention.

Josh: I use 1and1.com as my webhosting. I have not heard of Shann Host or Dotster. I personally think web hosting has to do a lot with your needs are and how much you would like to spend. I have two servers, one shared and one dedicated, that I use for personal and business. I can tell you that the dedicated server customer support is much more knowledgeable and prompt. If you are only hosting a couple of sites and don’t drive tons and tons of traffic, focus more on the price. If you are hitting it hard, focus on the services and equipment.

BM Asks: When did you start blogging? How many blogs do you own? How many are active?

Josh: I started full-time blogging at the start of the year. I had written a few blog posts before that but wouldn’t really consider myself a blogger at that point. Currently, I work on about 10 or so active blogs. I have a few drifters that are waiting for some attention. Mostly I use the extra blogs to drive niche traffic or build support for other sites I work on.

Chelle Asks: Is the majority of your traffic from social media or organic search results?

Which makes me wonder, why do you think more people don’t search for more marketing related terms? I’ve done a lot of keyword research for it and there are very few that aren’t broad terms that get more than 20 searches a day. Are people just not thinking that way for marketing info yet?

Josh: Most of my traffic comes from organic searches or referring site. I am averaging about 150 marketing related searches a day via the major three Google, MSN and Yahoo.

It’s hard to have an accurate view of search traffic from just keyword searches alone. Once you are first for random marketing related terms, you would be surprised of the amount of searches they bring. I have moved up a lot recently for “marketing ideas” and related terms like “Halloween Marketing Ideas” which will bring a nice steady flow of traffic in at least until the end of the month. I usually see what people are searching for when they come to my blog and at what page I show up in the serps for that term. If they are finding me on page 5 and I know with a little work I can get to page 1, I will spend a little time doing that. The first spot on page 1 receives about 80% of the clicks for that search term. You never know what you are going to get until you do it.

shawal Asks: It is possible to sell a blogspot blog, if yes, HOW?

Josh: Technically, no. But can you work something out with a potential buyer? Probably yes. Not easy. That is one of the hard things to overcome in free hosting like Blogspot. Everything you do there is like renting a house. You don’t get the equity you put into it.

Driveway Sealing Asks: I’ve started a new site and I wanted to know: What would you do to get it ranked highly in the SERPS in under 3 months?

Is it blog commenting? or directory submissions? a combo of both maybe? Anything else I am missing?

Josh: I would approach this one of two ways depending on how old the domain is. If it is a brand new domain, you are going to shoot up in the serps and then right back down to work your way up again. This is Google’s way of preventing spam sites from taking over their serps. So in that case I would do directory submissions, blog commenting on dofollow high pr pages and reciprocal linking like blog rolls. It’s as effective as one-way links, but it passes link love more evenly while you crawl the new site back up the serps.

For an older site that has been established for at least 1-2 years, I would focus on high quality anchor links. Write a guest post for a high pr site with your link in it and comment on high pr pages with a contextual anchor link. I don’t personally do this but it works if done correctly to purchase a link from a high pr page. Sometimes it can run $30-40 a month for a good link, but it is an option. Always consider the risk vs. reward factor before doing any of this. Link building is strictly forbidden in search engines TOS.