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internet marketing

Web Strategy and Internet Marketing: Hardware

by Nic

I was looking at my desk the other day reflecting on all the bits and pieces I now have at my disposal to run my growing online portfolio of businesses – and this is just the hardware.

Web Strategist Nic Lucas shows the tools for Social Media

See, what happens is that you start out on this internet journey with a laptop and standard software, and then you keep coming across better ways to do things, necessary tools, and absolutely stacks of software.

The software is particularly useful because it’s what sets online business apart from offline business – software is the magic that holds all this together.

I thought I’d run through the stuff I have in my Web Strategy Den and explain (or is that justify 8-) ) why I have these tools.

Tools for Web Strategy and Social Media

The first and most central piece of hardware is my MacBook Pro.  It’s pictured on the stand with the screen closed, because I use an external screen when I’m hanging at home for the visuals – I can simply see more stuff on the big screen (OK – this was a want, not a need – but having the big screen sure has made for a more enjoyable experience!).

The MacBook Pro has all the necessary software and I can pretty much run my business straight from that laptop – which is what I take with me when I hit the cafes for some light relief.  I have it on a stand for two reasons:

  1. to create more space, and
  2. to get it off the desk for ventilation.

You’ll also see me giving away my age with the white iMac.  This is what I started out on – but couldn’t take to a cafe – so it really didn’t suit my lifestyle.  I use it now as another back-up and I can record screen casts on it while I’m using my MacBook Pro to run webinars (which are a great social media strategy).  This is also the kids computer – so they surf the net and do homework on it, which I like as it get’s them in the room with me, rather than me being shut away from them.

Rhoda also uses this computer for her digital media strategy stuff – which is starting to pick up now as we’re working on a joint project together.

The small white Macbook – well, that’s just a roaming browser basically.  And a useful DVD player!

The PC – which I wish wasn’t there.  I only use it for two programs that are still not available for the mac.  One has to do with internet marketing and the other is a stats program for my PhD research.  I’m hoping that soon I’ll be able to clear that thing off the desk for good.

Computer Back Ups

You’ll notice quite a few back-up options on my desk.  I already use the iMac as a back-up.  I have three external drives visible in the photo and two others that you can’t see.  I rotate these and back-up regularly (I’ve scheduled back ups into my iCal with audible reminders).  Why so paranoid?  Well, I’ve had two hard drives crash, so it’s once bitten twice shy, twice bitter, freakin’ paraniod!

The Smart Phone

Also featured is my iPhone – never very far away from me at all.  Of course, it’s not really a phone and I can almost run my business from it.  What do I use my iPhone for besides the phone?  Well mainly, it’s this stuff:

  • text / SMS
  • facebook updates and social networking
  • twitter updates and networking
  • skype chat
  • foursquare location updates (sent to facebook)
  • reeder (a really cool app for my Google Reader and recommended by Ed Dale)
  • google (the full suite, using primarily Buzz and Maps,)
  • qik for real time streaming video to the web
  • proprompter which turns my iPhone into a telepromter (for the videos I do)
  • HT Recorder (for audio and podcasting)

You might also note that I have a USB hub, which gives me a whole lotta extra USB ports for all my peripherals.  It’s a powered USB hub so I can plug anything into it that needs power to work.  This was a time saving purchase … very useful.

Web cam and microphone

You’ll see that next to my screen I’ve got a web cam – it’s got a DV in and so I can use it for things like screen casts.  It’s just more flexible than using the display camera – because I can change orientation, zoom, effects, exposure etc.  I need to use a fire-wire connection for this.

Almost there …

Next is a good quality microphone – you can see it sitting in the box.  Fact is, I often just use the display audio and have found it works just fine.  Other times I use a Sony lapel mic and that also works really well.

Paul Smith

The last thing I have tagged in the photo is my “Cool Paul Smith Play Thing”, which I bought in the UK when I was over there launching my Advanced Social Web course.  It’s a block made of 8 smaller blocks which fold and unfold – with each configuration creating a different surface image.  … yeah … I know … you kind’ve have to see it to get it.  In any case, you should just know that it’s very cool and that it’s important to have very cool things on your desk when you’re a groovy web strategist.

Now, having all this stuff looks good – but I’ll let you in on something.  Most of it is unnecessary and you can make a huge dent in starting an online business with just a great laptop, camera, mic and back-up system.  What I do when I get together with my internet marketing mates is check out the software they’ve got – that’s where the real money is hidden.

Did you enjoy this light hearted edu-post?

If you did, it’s easy to share and spread the love around.  Simply share the link with your friends on facebook or twitter (or wherever you hang out) and let them know to come and check this out.  Someone else who has an awesome setup at home – earns stacks of money – and who I ask for advice is James Schramko – you should check out his Facebook page too!

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So, why am I interested in marketing?

by Nic

For a long while there – I didn’t like marketing.  Maybe I was brought up that way.  Maybe it’s also just that natural dislike of being “sold”.  I was distrustful of sales people.  “Buyer Beware”.

But what was the real issue here?  I mean, really, I did actually ‘need’ stuff in my life.  And I did ‘want’ stuff in my life.  And I found out about the stuff I needed and wanted because of marketing.

So, this whole dislike of marketing was internally inconsistent.  I had to narrow this down to something that made sense.  And as it turns out, I love being “sold” when the thing that’s being “sold” to me is exactly what I either need or want.  I can’t stand being “sold” something I don’t need or want – and that’s the point of this short post.  Marketing isn’t a problem.  Trying to sell something to someone who doesn’t need or want it is the problem.  Trying to sell something that doesn’t work – that’s a problem.

In her new book, Vanessa Fox talks about the Marketing in the Age of Google.  The tag line on the book is “your online strategy IS your business strategy” [bold mine].  Vanessa used to work for Google in their webmaster division, so that’s why I decided to get this book.  It’s a good read.  There’s only one point I want to take from the book and emphasis here, and it’s this stuff Vanessa quotes from Geoffrey Miller:

“Marketing is not just one of the most important ideas in business. It has become the most dominant force in human culture.”

Miller defines marketing as “[a] systematic attempt to fulfill human desires by producing goods and services that people will buy. It is where the wild frontiers of human nature meet the wild powers of technology.” He goes further to describe the marketing revolution of the 1950s and 60s as a shift to understanding that a “company should produce what people desire, instead of trying to convince them to buy what the company happens to make.”

I like the new marketing.  I like marketing in the Age of Google.  I love the experience of looking for stuff on the web and finding webpages that are a perfect match for what I was looking for.  It’s what I try and do when I develop my own products and services – and it’s what I now help my clients do as well.  When you are marketed to in this way, it’s a pleasure.  And it sure makes that ‘other’ type of marketing look and feel even worse.


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Advanced Social Web: The London Launch

by Nic

I get this email.  It’s an invitation to give a presentation to a group of new online entrepreneurs based in London.  “Cool”, I think to myself, “I’ve presented to business groups in Australia and New Zealand – why not the UK”? And I needed to visit the shops in Covent Garden and on Oxford St.

The email also presented the opportunity for me to be able to take on mentoring or coaching students from the event – something I’d already been doing on an individual basis with various experts – helping them with their web strategy.

So, I had the system.  I just needed to develop the presentation and formalize my coaching program – not too hard when you’ve been a lecturer for 15 years.

Advanced Social Web for Online Authority and Online Business

And so this is how Advanced Social Web came about.  It’s all about the web – the web is a social machine – and to win at this game you have to have an advanced strategy.  So, I decided to get serious about this and booked myself a secret hide-away and for four days I put together the basic outline and then spent the new few months filling in all the gaps.

London was a huge success.  I had a great crowd at the Novotel, St Pancras.  I presented the concepts of the Freeconomy and the Socialconomy.  I talked about how the internet is a brain and how understanding this can help people earn an income online.  I talked about what it takes to become an authority and based these steps on my own experiences.  I talked about the opportunities available online for people who become an authority – or trusted guide – in their field or market.  I talked about how to make all this happen efficiently and strategically, with systems and software.

And I hit the mark.  The feedback I received was amazing – so good that I should have asked for testimonials.

The best thing about that whole process, however, wasn’t my talk, my information, my anything.  The best thing was that a group of highly talented people with a diverse range of experiences, decided to take action and allow me to help them move forward.  That was by far the coolest thing.

Anyone can dream.  Anyone can crap on about how they’re going to do this and that.  But this represents the sea of people who never take that dream forward.  Who never actually do “this and that”.  And after speaking to thousands of people over the last year, this lack of decisiveness and lack of action has become incredibly boring to me.

And this is why – when faced with a group of people who are actually prepared to step up and do something – I feel the opposite of bored.  I feel excited.  Enthused.  Joyful.  I want to see them succeed.  I want to be a part of that.

So my Advanced Social Web program is running right now.  I’m not, as yet, promoting it anywhere else.  But watch this space – there are going to be some great success stories.

If you’re interested in learning more about what I’ve learned and what I’ve got to say about all this stuff, then grab my comprehensive free guide – you just enter your email at the top of this page so I know where to send it.  And yes, the word ‘grab’ is a verb – you actually have to do something to get something.

So grab the guide – I dare you.

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My comprehensive free guide just for you

by Nic

I’ve finally decided to put together a guide about how I’ve managed to change everything over the last 18 months.  I’ve gone from University lecturer and health professional to:

  1. starting an online education company,
  2. consulting to professionals about how to become an online authority using social media,
  3. running an exclusive search engine optimization business,
  4. launching a web design business,
  5. selling a bucket load of useful things online, and
  6. getting to speak about all this on international platforms in front of hundreds of people.

Of course, I’m still a health professional and I could be a lecturer if I wanted to be – but I’m now I’m on a very different path and I get to choose – it’s my choice.

On reflection – that’s quite a big change.  And the more people I meet, the more people are interested in how I’ve manged such a shift in career.  It would seem that there are a stack of people who’d like to attempt the same sort of thing, and so that’s why I’ve decided to write this guide.

I guess I’m thinking it’ll be more like a story, but written in a step-by-step format so that you can see what I actually did with the aim of you thinking about how you could do something similar – because the steps are bound to be the same even though the individual stories will be different.

Now one thing I’ve learned in all this is not to presume what people are going to want to know.  If I’m going to go to the trouble of writing a guide that I give away for free, it makes far more sense to first find out what people actually want to know – so that I can then include that info in the guide.

So this means that you get to participate in this process.  I’ve set up a survey – just a short one – four questions – and when you fill in your questions and tell me what you want to know, then I’ll include the answers in the guide AND put you on the list to be the first to receive it.  Sound like a plan?

Oh, and apparently, if I include the word NOW in the next line, you’ll be more likely to go do it now, so watch this:

Go here to take the survey NOW!


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The internet is a brain

by Nic

There have been many analogies to help explain the internet – but the best analogy is the brain.  Not only is it an analogy – but it’s a direct comparison.  As Jeffrey Stibel says, the internet is not like a brain – it is a brain.

Having a background in neuroscience – it’s easy to see the similarities.  But rather than this just being a compare and contrast exercise, there is good reason to understand why the internet is a brain.  You can look at the way the brain functions to create hyper-awareness of information to help understand how to create hyper-awareness on the internet.

Here are just a few simple examples of brain-internet similarities.

  1. The brain is a large network of interconnected neurons, and the internet is a large network of interconnected computers
  2. The brain isn’t about neurons, but about communication between neurons, and the internet isn’t about computers but about communication between computers
  3. Both the brain and the internet are all about human communication.
  4. One of the key ways humans communicate is with language, and one of the key ways that the internet communicates is through keywords (or search terms).
  5. The functional unit of the brain is a synapse – the connection between two neurons.  The functional unit of the internet is the hyperlink – the connection between two different locations or webpages (or specific URLs).
  6. The more information that passes through a synapse, the ’stronger’ that synapse becomes.  The more information that passes through a neural pathway, the stronger that neural pathway becomes due to an increase in the number of synapses.  The more traffic that passes through a ‘web pathway’ (through hyperlinks) the stronger that pathway becomes due to an increase in the number of hyperlinks.
  7. Because there is ‘too much information’ our brain has filters to reduce the noise and only allow important information through to consciousness.  Because there is too much information on the internet, the internet also has filters to reduce noise and promote important information.  One example of such a filter is Google search.  It filters millions of websites so that it can display the most appropriate website amongst all that noise.  The bigger example is social media, where the crowd is the filter.  The crowd filters information by either sharing it or not sharing it, by ‘liking’ it or ‘not liking it’, by rating it or not rating it, by ‘flagging’ it as inappropriate or not flagging it.
  8. We only become aware of something if it passes through our filters and hit’s our consciousness, and we only become aware of something on the internet when it passes through the filters and hit’s our consciousness
  9. When a brain becomes consciously aware of information it may amplify the signal to create hyper-awareness – and an example of this is hyper-algesia (a heightened awareness of pain).  Likewise, when an individual becomes consciously  aware of information on the internet they may amplify the signal by sharing or promoting that information to their friends or contacts.  This is the start of something going ‘viral’ and is the mechanism by which the market can create hyper-awareness of a website, song, video, image, product or service.  The internet works to filter out the noise but amplify the signal of something that passes through the filter in order to more clearly evaluate the importance of that signal.  The more people who share a particular ‘thing’ online, the more it get’s shared.  The more that particular thing gets shared, the more the search engines become aware of it and rank it highly in their search results.  The higher the particular ‘thing’ is ranked in search engines, the more people ‘find it’, and the more they find it, the more they share it.

What does all this mean?  Let’s work backwards.  If you want to create hyper-awareness of anything online, be it a product, service, charity, public health message – whatever – then you need to be able to get that information through he filters of the internet so that it reaches the consciousness of the group or market that you’re targeting.  In order to do this, you must understand the filters and how to pass through them.  Those filters are ’search filters’ (e.g Google) and ’social filters’ (e.g social media).

The functional unit is “keywords contained in hyperlinks”, and this has now expanded to include images, audio and video contained in hyperlinks.  Still, the ‘keywords’ are at the center of how the internet-brain organizes everything, and so keywords are the essential starting point for any online promotion.

Keywords start out life as ‘an idea’ in someones brain … but that’s for another post.  Thanks for reading.

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The shocking truth about web design and ranking on Google

March 17, 2010

In this post, I’m going to share my experience with web design since starting out in the internet marketing world.  It was a shock to me and I know it will be a shock to you.
I’ve evaluated at least 70 websites now and performed an ‘official analysis’ of the way ...

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Speaking at World Internet Summit

March 4, 2010

Just a little over a year ago, I attended an introductory seminar on internet marketing – and now I’m speaking at the same seminars.  A lot can change in a year.
When people find out that my background is in health care, education and medical research, it can seem a bit ...

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My meeting with the rainmaker: David Bullock

January 4, 2010

Last year, I met the renowned social media expert and profit engineer, David Bullock. I was sitting at a sushi bar in a hotel in Orlando, Florida where I was attending one of the best internet marketing event EVER, and he showed up looking for food and and drink. ...

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Self Publishing: eBook or hard copy?

December 12, 2009

I love the internet.  It gives people opportunities that just a few years ago didn’t exist.  I think one of the key things the internet has done is to squeeze out the so-called ‘middle-man’ – and publishers are definitely in that category.
Publishers were intermediaries – they stood between authors and ...

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