Why so silent?

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A bunch of people have asked me why this blog has been silent since about 2017.

Well, actually, it hasn’t. You just don’t see it because a lot has been happening on the back end.

It’s been an incredibly tumultuous time these past 6 years, filled with some rather extreme ups and terrible downs that could make great content for any number of books and, epic films and documentaries. But this is real life. Not some made for TV mini-series.

Up front, however, it’s a different story.

OK, so what are you up to?

What I can confirm, is that I am still here, doing what I do: Making things and marketing things. And, trading things.

Trading things? Tell me more about that.

My journey into trading began decades ago as a kid, as just another observer on a tour of a stock exchange in the United States. I had the pleasure of walking by the NYSE on Wall Street on a number of occasions in the early 1980s. And I had the privilege, thanks to a stock broker who was a family friend, of having a guided tour and visits to the Philadelphia Stock Exchange in the late 1980s.

Many years later, I would end up marketing trading platforms for various clients.

Some years after that, I found myself trading bitcoin, litecoin, ethereum, xrp and other assets, not just cryptocurrencies, though they were predominant in my portfolio.

As it were, I went full bore into a type of trading that I knew was statistically disadvantaged: Traditional Technical Analysis. I thought I’d found a way to make it work.

Long story short: I found a way to make it work, but just barely, and only because of strict risk management and a penchant for taking profits early and often, limiting my losses, and not being emotionally attached to my trades. Generally speaking, though, it is not a great way to trade, and the overwhelming majority of people using those methods, lose their shirts. And I knew that before I ever tried, because I used to market said methods, even though I was also clearly promoting better ways to do it (kind of a positive foreshadowing of my own experience in re-discovering the wonders of Black-Scholes, volatility trading etc, before I even realized it).

Some years after delving into that method of trading, I completely switched to trading volatility, entropy, probability and statistics (VEPS). I have also co-founded a group of traders (Alpha Trading) that trade using VEPS. Shortly before creating Alpha Trading, a small number of us were in some other related group and figured out how to use volatility tools not only to trade options (for which they were invented), but to also use them to trade low time frame volatility. In other words, we figured out how to scalp delta with volatility, probability and statistics. Since then, we left that othe group and established Alpha Trading. And in short order, we made great progress thanks to our diverse and multi talented team, and our strong, if small, community. We have built the best indicators available to retail traders, directly on TradingView, which is the world’s most popular charting website for assets traded on the markets.

While we do not expect the community to grow very much, we enjoy using the tools and educating people about how to use them, live in our Alpha Trading discord and on video live streams across the innerwebz on TradingView, YouTube and Twitch.

Wait, if the tools are great, why don’t you expect the community to grow much?

Well, it turns out, most retail traders are total degen gamblers. They would probably have more fun going to a casino and gambling on various games and at least getting some cheap or free perks, food, drinks, upgraded rooms and entertainment, rather than just being the liquidity on the other side of the trade.

Seriously, why more people do not spend the time it takes to learn to trade using VEPS, is just because that’s human nature. People do not want to learn things that take time. Less if it may take days, weeks or months to comprehend and put to good use.

So, what are you doing now?

For now, I’m trading and marketing.

What are you doing on the marketing side?

On the marketing end, my agencies continue to run, and we help clients around the world with development (business development and product development), marketing (strategic, and technical) and sales (online, by phone, etc). We have been very busy for some years now, creating use cases for crypto, blockchain, web3 projects, and marketing them. And, we have been very busy creating and marketing strategies, marketing tech and marketing methods for Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning as a part of our overall marketing in-house and for our clients. We are in deep, way beyond the retail tools you see commonly referred to like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, or its implementation on Microsoft Bing or even Google Bard. We are talking about and working with firms that use ML/AI/DL at different levels, for different things. Everything from content creation to cybersecurity to building fancy algorithms to create more innovative cryptocurrencies and blockchain projects, to building better bots that trade assets smarter and faster, to managing daycare centers and retiree centers, to preventing road accidents, to creating better, more immersive gaming experiences, to helping manage healthcare plans for individuals and organizations, to helping restaurants and food delivery companies create better experiences for their customers, to helping warehouses manage their inbound deliveries, storage, outbound shipping and deliveries to customers better. The list just goes on and on.

We are working with VR and AR clients and helping them get the word out to the right people, about what they do.

What are you up to on the trading side?

On the trading side, apart from trading, I’m showing people how to trade using our VEPS indicators and methods. I do that for free, because I am sick of seeing Retail Traders Get REKT! because they are misinformed and they use bad tools and bad methods and are statistically disadvantaged to trade. To that end, I have written an authoritative book about trading using VEPS, which I first wrote when I first went full bore into trading with volatility, a few years ago already (in 2020). That book has been edited and recreated and updated a number of times already, with the help of my co-founders as well as some other notable inputs.

And what’s the plan for the future?

The future? Stay tuned.

How to Answer Common Introductory Marketing Questions about your Agency’s Services

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The Background

This article about common marketing questions people initially send to marketing agencies, was inspired by the sheer volume of similar questions our agency receives daily, yay, e’en on weekends and holidays.  Sidetrack Data Facts: After all, only about 1/3 of the world even celebrates Christmas.  And far fewer celebrate any other holiday. In fact, more people celebrate or watch the Soccer (Football) World Cup (3.2 Bn watched the one in Brazil in 2014) and the Olympics (3.5 Bn watched the one in Brazil in 2016). 

So with that in mind, it seemed logical to share some ideas about the types of questions we get, and how we very often respond to them.  When reading it, it’s impossible not to notice certain patterns, and develop certain efficiencies around the commonly asked questions.

OK that’s enough background on the article. Here it is, in all its glory. I hope you enjoy it, and share it with your peers and colleagues in the marketing world.

how to make sure answer marketing questions to get your leads get where they want to go

The Barrage of Questions & Answers

I get a nice, healthy amount of inquiries by email and on various websites, about new businesses seeking help with marketing.

The exchanges often go something like this:

“Hello! I have seen your profile and maybe you can help my start-up. I have a [product or service] that [has these differentiating features]. it’s a little like [the market leaders] and better [in these ways]. It should be a [product or service] for [business or consumer target audience segment] in the [target group, ie: age, business type] in [target geolocation].  Or so I believe :-)Can you help me with my new business? I need an online marketing strategy, a detailed plan of specific steps and tactics I have to do … to have success with this [product or service].

Regards,

[Joe Smith]“

To which a pretty typical initial response I send reads as follows:

“Hi [Joe],

Thanks for reaching out to me. I’ll be happy to create an online marketing strategy for your new [product or service] company.

To get this done, simply [place the order or request for further information] from [the relevant web page], and any [optional feature / extras] you want.

Or, if you prefer, i can send you a custom offer.

To do that, I need to know these basic questions:
1) What’s your company or product’s website address, (if you have one)?
2) Are you able to generate leads and traffic?
3) What’s your current monthly marketing budget?
4) What are your growth targets for the next year?

Thanks,
Yasha“

The inquiring person then usually follows-up with something in this direction:

“Hi,
1. [I don’t have a website right now, though I plan to have one soon.] or [My website is at http:/ /theproductorservicewebsite .com]
2. [YES, I can generate Traffic], or [NO, I am not able to generate traffic.]  Sometimes the respondent adds in things like, [“I am sure I can create traffic with google/facebook/instagram ads, if I can just target them properly.”]
3. [My budget is $XXXX / month].  Sometimes they add in info like, [“I cover all my own costs ‘out of pocket’, with the money I earn at my day job.”]
4. I want to [Sell X # of Products or Service contracts or Orders] This Year. That’s the minimum I have to sell to cover my costs. In the next year I want to sell minimum of [2X this year’s monthly average orders] every month. Do you think this is a realistic goal?

Regards,
[Joe Smith]“

To which, again, a pretty typical response I send reads as follows:

Great. Yes those are realistic targets. Sell them to [shops / websites] and try for a small [chain of stores or network of sites] or two.You could sell many more if your product is good and you can handle larger orders.

FOR CONSUMER PRODUCTS THAT ARE SELLABLE IN THE FIELD, I USUALLY ADD SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
Go to one huge event, a festival or a huge sports game, and you could unload hundreds, even thousands.

AND THEN I INEVITABLY ASK ANYONE INQUIRING:

What is your cost per unit [or case/crate/rental/lease or other metric]?
Really what I’m asking here is ‘What’s your cost per sale?’
factoid: More than 23% of inquirers we received just in the last two years, say they don’t know their cost per sale. Marketing Tip: KNOW YOUR DATA, OR ELSE!

The prospective client then usually replies with something that goes like this

“For the [YYYY number] of Units I pay USD [X.XX] per Unit.”

Knowing all of that very insightful data, I can then follow-up with an offer. So, for example, I’ll send a message that reads like this:

OK.

Here’s your custom offer.

COST: $2500

DELIVERABLES:
I will do strategic business consulting and marketing expertise
I will create an Online Marketing Strategy for your energy drink business.

As part of that Strategy, you will also receive a Big To Do List, and a Tailored Action Plan.

Your consultation sessions with me will help you crush your goals.

You will also get guidance to implement the high level business strategy, business policy, or more technical aspects / tactics in SEO, SEM, Social Media and other Growth / Acquisitions Channels (Email, Direct, Referral, etc).

Plus, you get a written summary of the key points discussed.

Ongoing work to implement, maintain and advance the strategy can be offered and ordered separately.

Specifications:
10 Day Delivery. Offer Expires [X days from the date this message is sent].

The person inquiring then usually writes me something like this

“Hello,Thank you for your offer. At the moment I’m considering a few other offers for my marketing.

Please make me an offer for “ongoing work to implement, maintain and advance the strategy”.

I need pay the costs myself for the first [X] months.

Also, would you please explain exactly how you can help me during the first [X] months, and how much time you have to invest?

I want to sell the first [YYYY Units] using only online marketing.

This is the main goal i am targeting: I want you to use your marketing service to help me to sell [YYYY Units] in [Target Geolocation(s)] [to Target Demographic(s)] via the internet within the next [X] months.

Can you do that for me? If you are able to get that done, then please send me an offer for that.”

Once I see that the company is a startup with very low budgets and is in need of immediate revenues, and keeping all costs in check, then I do something that is unusual. I tell them something like this:

If your goal is only for the next [X] months, then what you really need is a sales effort.

You can definitely sell online, but to sell [YYYY Units] online in [X] months, without any prior sales of the product, it will be harder to do that with just a website and online marketing, rather than with a basic site that can accept purchases, and a person to send sales emails and makes sales calls.

The marketing strategy I proposed was for your longer term (1 year, 2 year, etc) business goals.

If what you need are immediate sales and you are short on funds to invest in a sales person, then you should frankly hit the pavement yourself and start knocking on doors of every [website / shop] that [buys/sells] [Similar Products Or Services] in your [local area / online markets of influence].

Small and Medium sized shops are your best bet. Small shops are easiest but will pay the least, often, though they’ll still pay. Medium sized shops are your sweet spot because you’re more likely to close a deal with them than with a large [chain / network] (at first), and they usually can pay more than the little shops.

That said, if you live in an area with lots of “specialty” shops (small, medium or big), then those are another matter, as they often pride themselves on offering rare items and new items, as it gives them a certain “cachet” / flair / style / vibe / culture that appeals to a certain demographic, and it’s one that is usually willing to pay a slight premium for unusual [products / services] like yours, or cool looking branded [products / services] like yours, that they have never heard of or tried before.

Have you tested the branding of the [product / service]? If not, frankly, you should test, test, test, and then go sell like the rent’s due tonight. If that doesn’t motivate you to get sales, nothing will. I am confident that if you go that route, you’ll sell [YYYY Units], easily, within a month or two, let alone three. If you do it right, you might sell many more than [YYYY Units] … and then you’ll be experiencing what is known as “a good, high quality problem to have”.

So there’s some free marketing and sales advice for you. If you try it and it works (and i’m sure it can), then please be kind enough to let me know how it went, tell your friends, peers and colleagues about it, or better yet … order my marketing services to help you grow once you have an actual marketing budget of a few grand a month, which is what you’ll be looking at spending to take your brand to the next level.

Until that time, you really can and should DIY, and ask folks like (read: other marketing professionals) that you know or can reach ie: in marketing fora & groups.

Otherwise, you risk investing in something where any little thing that doesn’t go as planned will be too stressful to your business.

When you’re running a lean operation, you should not try to spend beyond your means. Otherwise, even a tiny tumble can be a bad crash.

OK, now that I’ve done my part to tell you why you should do it yourself at this stage …. If you STILL want me to help you at this stage, feel free to let me know. I’ll send you an offer for ongoing work. Just don’t be surprised by a monthly cost that’s somewhat in the [mid-to-high four] digits at first. Or, if you want to only spend that amount [or less] at the most, then I can send you such a plan, and just keep in mind that it will be, by definition, a smaller effort than I would normally offer.

EFFECTIVE RESULTS:

Using efficiencies, we have seen this process of inquiries and responses, impact our business’ bottom line, with a 37% Growth Rate in First Time Buyers (FTBs), YoY. And for our clients, signing up with us has led to even higher yields of Growth Rates and Primary KPIs for our clients.

If this is of interest to you, you are welcome to visit our marketing agency website. We look forward to hearing from you … and replying to you in kind.

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 2 of 2)

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Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 2 of 2)

Create high quality content for powerful SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media mentions about your site.

secret sauce for online marketing, illustration

(cont’d)

Be Insightful

Your target demographic (aka: your audience) is endlessly searching for new information and the best methods to optimize the performance of routine tasks. If you publish video content that is both interesting and informative, then by definition, it is also highly sharable video. Practically every single person I can think of, and definitely anyone sharing anything they recently discovered, wants to learn something they didn’t already know from that discovery.  And people love watching videos more than anything else they currently do online.  That’s why videos can be a powerful tool for curating top performing content.

At my fun-based website The Daily Dose, we curate the best related content, including videos for viewers, whether they’re looking for editorial cartoons, jokes, pranks, cat videos, current trends, or world news. Therefore, be sure to use a similar tactic with your videos, and curate the best, most informative and sharable content which surprises and enlightens your viewers. And it should, of course, be relevant to the audience.

Be Inspirational

As you may already know since a long time, the story of Upworthy’s success is amazing. The website grew to more than six million unique page views per month in its very first year, partly due to its catchy and memorable headlines. One other key reason they grew so rapidly, was that the site searches for inspirational stories and content to share with their sizable audience.

In order to earn the viral advantage you so desire, go and find stories that are inspirational to your readers. Maybe it’s an article about overcoming adversity, or finding ways to cooperate and collaborate. Perhaps it’s about how to succeed in some way. People love stories that relate to their own aspirations, and the more inspiration it gives them, the more your viewers will share it with others.

Of course, making viral videos is not a cake walk. If it were easy, then every business and individual with a smartphone would have their 15 minutes of fame, if not more.

Using this guide and the six key tips properly will help you achieve more shares, likes, comments, re-tweets, follows, etc. and more importantly, it will help you raise your own standards in terms of quality. That in itself, will significantly increase your probability at successfully creating viral content.

Do you have any great tips for creating viral videos and other top trending content? Share in the comments below!

*****

All right. Now let’s go over how to optimize your content. The following instructions are applicable to most, if not all, content pages.

Section 1: SEO

SEO: Optimize Your Content For Search Engines

The procedure is standard on any WordPress site with the SEO Yoast plugin installed and configured as described in Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins.

Here’s what to do in your WordPress Admin area:

Step 1: In the Admin area, go to the Posts or Pages menu (depending on the type of content you wish to publish) from the Admin toolbar. That’s the vertical menu bar seen on the Left on WP installations in English and other Latin languages.

Here’s the quick list of options and fields to configure:

SEO – What to do to rank well in Search Engines

Bad Behavior Plugin

Acunetix WP Security Plugin

WP Login Security Plugin

WordPress Firewall 2 Plugin

WordPress 2 DropBox Backup Plugin

Akismet anti-spam Plugin

Done all of that? If yes, then Awesome. Your content is now optimized for search engines. You can put a big green check next to SEO on your page’s list of critical to-dos.

Section 2: Email

As any serious marketer will tell you, email lists are the key to your business’ success. Email lists drive new prospects to Sign Up, Register, Subscribe, Buy and Buy Again. Inside what is commonly called the Acquisitions Funnel, or the Growth Funnel, Email is the key to Retention. And in any serious business, Retention (your repeat customers) quickly becomes the bulk of your revenues.

Email – Your List Is Your Business

Setting Your Permalinks

Customizing Your Website Title, Subtitle, and other key WP Settings

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Contact Form 7 Plugin

GD Star Rating Plugin

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps v3 for qTranslate Plugin

Section 3: Social Media

Your social media efforts complete the cycle of creating optimized content, distributing it through your best spokespeople (your email list subscribers) and succeeding at content marketing.

Social Media – Earn proof, authority, interaction and popularity

Jetpack multi-purpose Plugin

Digg Digg Social Sharing Plugin

Pretty Link Lite Plugin

WordPress Short Codes Plugin

 

Step 2: Keep in mind that most plugins are not installed by default. However, some may be, especially if you installed it via a version customized by your web hosting provider. If any plugin on this list is pre-installed, then you just need to check the Read the Instructions, make sure you setup the Settings with your specific details for each one (when required), and make sure any pre-installed plugin is activated by clicking the word Activate in the Plugin’s summary on the Plugins page.

Step 3: For all other plugins, which are not pre-installed for you, click on the “Add New” button which is at the top of the Plugins Page.

 

Congratulations! Once you have followed the steps outlined above on your target content, your page is rolling and picking up steam. As your content’s distribution grows, you will start to see opportunities to monetize as it reaches a growing number of people.

Step 22: Now be sure to keep your content up-to-date. Do this by editing the page from time to time.

Step 23: On the Plugins or WordPress Updates page, you may update your plugins one at a time, or more than simultaneously, or even all of them at once.

 

If you prefer watching a video tutorial about installing your site and various key plugins included on this page, checkout this highly useful clip by a fellow online content marketer, Matthew Woodward, who created and maintains his own great website about creating real value and earnings through web publishing.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to analyze the data relevant to your website and its content. The article covers the use of Google Analytics (GA), Google Webmaster Tools (GWT), and other leading data analysis tools. It is the easiest guide to follow the best practices of business intelligence or business insight, both commonly known as BI.

As usual, if you like this article and care to help us in our efforts to put Google’s quality content claims to the test, then I ask you to please share this page with your peers and colleagues on your social networks or any place where web publishers may find it beneficial.

Follow us: @yashaharari on Twitter

A little bit of self-promotion:  If you need a great marketing agency on a budget you can afford, try our agency, which you can visit at YashaHarari.com. We know you’ll love the level of service and of course, the results.

Previous Lesson:Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (pt. 1 of 2) Adding the power of High quality content, SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media to your site

Next Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 7: Launch It Lean. When and what your pre-seed startup should spend on with your Marketing & Sales budgets.

Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 1 of 2)

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Web Marketing Lesson 6: Secret Sauce (Part 1 of 2)

Create high quality content for powerful SEO, Email Newsletter updates and Social Media mentions about your site.

secret sauce for online marketing, illustration

WARNING: 99.99% of you WILL FAIL to get your content to go viral. So if you’re looking for a 1 minute fix, a trick or a magic bullet to make your crappy content loved by everyone who sees it, then please, skip this page and get on with your life.  Only the Top 1% of the Top 1% of you that bother to read and apply this information will have a shot at that ephemeral sort of Internet publishing success known as “gone viral”.

This article is an easy to use, step-by-step guide to give any article, post or Page on your WordPress website the juice it needs to go viral in the easiest, best and fastest way possible.

Got your WordPress website powered up and ready to grow, but just don’t know what to do to make your work earn massive reach?

No worries. This article shows you specifically the ingredients necessary to make your content be popular.

Those ingredients include four major components, and they are usually best done in this order:

0. Content

1. SEO

2. Email

3. Social Media

Aside from being the most efficient method for adding the secret sauce to your content, you can repeat this process for just about any page on any type of site. It just happens to be very easy to do on your WordPress site.

Okay, so let’s quickly review what you should have already done.

Step 1: Register your domain.

Step 2: Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Step 3: Install WordPress

Step 4: Setup plugins to secure your WordPress site and give it the extra powers you need.

In case you skipped straight to this page, and still don’t have a domain or website host, here are some quick shortcuts for you to catch up.

Recommended Registrars:
GoDaddy
JustHost

OK, so we’re all together now. Super.

Now before you can actually optimize, distribute and get social media to popularize your great article, post, page, or other object, like a video, an infographic or an ebook, you first have to create that great piece of content that will appeal to masses of people.

And here’s how you do that.

Section 0: Content

6 Common Traits To Make Your Videos And Other Content Go Viral

As you undoubtedly know, viral content is the most sought after type of content. Of course, if you’re new to publishing, or if you’re stuck in old rules and regulations about how to create content, getting your videos to go viral is more of a Herculean feat than it is a walk in the park. Extremely sharable content is so powerful that it may boost your business, big time. This surge in growth can lead new people to your site, even multiple times, and increase your conversion rate (that’s the percentage of visitors to your website, who take the action you want them to take). Creating a viral video or other type of content is far from easy, unless you know these six simple secrets.

Most people, and especially “experts” and “gurus” will tell you that getting any content to go viral is akin to winning the Internet’s equivalent of the lottery. You’ve no doubt heard about how hard it is to earn viral status for any piece of content, and usually it’s even harder to repeat, let alone to do better and better with each successive attempt. For every viral video success, there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of total epic fails. Even sites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy, two massive leaders of viral content creation, only have about 0.3 percent of of their posts going viral.

Fortunately for you, I have spent decades researching, experimenting and working through trial and error in the content and marketing business, taking copious notes and distilling them into teachable moments, so that you don’t have to. You can simply read the following and try it out for yourself. You’re welcome.

The good news, despite what others will tell you, is that there are a great deal of things you can do to greatly increase your chances of success at making your content go viral.

So if you want (or need) to help your business claim its stake on the rewards of viral content, follow these six tactics:

Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)

Remember, the content you create is for the Twitter generation. And that means, you have to be able to crystalize your social media message in 140 characters or less. Brainwidth given to any topic is shrinking. And despite the ever-increasing population on Earth, the available slice of earned brainshare in the total minds’ pie is getting narrower for any publisher. This is happening as a result of a shift in the ratio of publishers from few publishers for the population, to many more publishers and channels for consumption than ever before. Human attention span keeps getting shorter. That means you need to tighten up your content be it in written, graphic, audio or video form. Edit your words. Less is more.  Unlike this article, which is lengthy and abundantly verbose for a reason (which will be revealed soon), your viral content should live by the old saying that “Brevity is wit”.

A survey published in The New York Times found more than 19% of people had left a video after only 10 seconds. By 60 seconds in, the video had a whopping 44% attrition rate of viewers. And that means, if you’ve even read this sentence after having read the article from the start (at an average adult reading speed), then you’re already in the top 1% of consumers; a sole survivor in the war for mental attention, fought by publishers eager to win your time. So congratulate yourself. You’re now fully in the labyrinth while all others have already admitted defeat and departed the field.

You see, by keeping the article lengthy, I have used mere words to separate the wheat from the chaff; the genuinely interested people who want to succeed at publishing viral content, from the general “gimme” people who just want to copy & paste their way through the production of content. That leaves you in pole position to take the flag, as soon as you get through the rest of this article, and apply its secrets to your own content.

And now that you know that about half of your audience is gone by the end of the first minute, and about 99% is gone by the end of minute two, be sure to put your most astonishing, interesting, mind-blowing, captivating, funny, or shocking information first and foremost in your content.

Creating viral content generally means do not save the best for last. Throw your first punch fast and hard, and get as many more hits in before that first minute is up.

Of course this does not mean you have to constrain your item to a bite-sized chunk. Viral content can in fact range anywhere in size from a single asset, like a .JPG file, all the way up to rich, multi-page experiences. But just like the Universe we live in, it has to start with a big bang.

After all, if you can’t sum up what you’re doing in a short phrase or two, how are you ever going to get it to go viral on twitter, facebook, linkedin, pinterest, imgur, reddit, etc?

Be Positive

In Contagious: Why Things Catch On, the book’s author, Jonah Berger, wrote that he learned that the most highly sharable or viral content tends to stir strong emotional response in the viewer, reader, listener or other sort of consumer. And of those emotions, the most sharable content has a tendency to be that which has an upbeat tone or a positive note. With the application of the empirical research method, Mr. Berger and University of Pennsylvania Professor Katherine Milkman discovered that happy emotions tend to perform better than sad emotions in terms of actual sharing results.

To be shareworthy, content must hit chords of emotion in viewers. These same people (or deep learning Artificial Intelligence machines) are more probable to share content of a positive nature, so if you want your videos to go viral, it’s important to strive for an upbeat or uplifting spin.

Be Timely

To make your content go viral, it can help to be updated on current events. Although much viral content seems “timeless” in terms of topic, a good deal of it is influenced by the goings-on of the real world. Making reference to an existing popular topic or theme, like  an Internet meme, you improve the likelihood that your content will be seen and shared by the people who have already shown an interest in the topic.

You can use any current event in the world, including politics, pop culture, arts, science, culture, travel, or any subject dominating the news. For instance, see how many parodies of popular entertainment like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones exist on video channels, content curation sites and image sharing sites. If you speak the lingua franca of your target audience and you express interest in their topics of interest, they are more want to share your content.

Be Engaged

A critical component of going viral is engagement. Engaging with a High Value Audience (HVA) leads to better rates of interest, involvement and loyalty. Do not underestimate your audience’s voice and opinion. This understanding is utilized by major brands including Coca-Cola, Old Spice and Amazon in everything from advertising campaigns to comments and other feedback channels on their websites and social media pages.

In addition to having a natural and organic fan base on social media channels, the British magician Dynamo engages larger audiences by doing appearances on BBC and with celebrity hosts like members of the boy band One Direction (when they were quite popular in 2012 – 2014). At one event, he answered fan questions who were using social media to send questions to a television show, the videos of which are up on YouTube. By involving himself with people who might normally be outside of his sphere of influence, he engaged more new minds to videos and TV shows that feature his talents as an illusionist, magician, and mind-reader. By answering questions from those viewers, he gave his brand of content a major boost and made his videos much more sharable.

To Be Continued …

As usual, if you like this article and care to help us in our efforts to put Google’s quality content claims to the test, then I ask you to please share this page with your peers and colleagues on your social networks or any place where web publishers may find it beneficial.

Follow us: @yashaharari on Twitter

Previous Lesson: Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

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Web Marketing Lesson 5: Adding and setting up important Plugins

This article is an easy to use, step-by-step method to enhance your WordPress website with some extremely powerful plugins in the easiest, best and fastest way possible.

wordpress plugin setup comic title

Got your WordPress website installed and want to make it rock … but you don’t know how?

Never fear. This page will show you what to do to make sure your site is safe, solid and super. And you can do this for practically any WordPress website you install.

All right, so let’s quickly recap what you should have done by now.

Step 1: Register your domain.

Step 2: Setup Your Web Hosting Account

Step 3: Install WordPress

In case you skipped straight to this page, and still don’t have a domain or website host, here are some quick shortcuts for you to catch up.

Recommended Registrars:
GoDaddy
JustHost

OK, so we’re all on the same page now. Great. Now we can begin the procedure for setting up your site with important settings and poweful plugins that will make your site so powerful, it just might be able to help you single-handedly crush even the mightiest evil forces in the world.

Here’s the quick list of plugins and things you may learn to install and configure on this page:

Section 1:

CRITICAL – for security

Bad Behavior Plugin

Acunetix WP Security Plugin

WP Login Security Plugin

WordPress Firewall 2 Plugin

WordPress 2 DropBox Backup Plugin

Akismet anti-spam Plugin

Section 2:

POWERFUL – for site functionality & search engine friendliness

Setting Your Permalinks

Customizing Your Website Title, Subtitle, and other key WP Settings

Yoast WordPress SEO Plugin

Contact Form 7 Plugin

GD Star Rating Plugin

W3 Total Cache Plugin

Google XML Sitemaps v3 for qTranslate Plugin

Section 3:

AWESOME – for website content development, flexibility, reach and social proof

Jetpack multi-purpose Plugin

Digg Digg Social Sharing Plugin

Pretty Link Lite Plugin

WordPress Short Codes Plugin

Section 4:

SWEET – for maintaining your website without having to waste your time

Keeping your WordPress core site code and WP plugins up-to-date

All right. Now let’s go over how to install Plugins. The following set of instructions is fairly standardized for most, if not all, WordPress plugins.

Here’s what to do in your WordPress Admin area:

The procedure is standard on any WordPress site.

Step 1: In the Admin area, go to the Plugins page from the Admin toolbar. That’s the vertical menu bar seen on the Left on WP installations in English and other Latin languages.

Step 2: Keep in mind that most plugins are not installed by default. However, some may be, especially if you installed it via a version customized by your web hosting provider. If any plugin on this list is pre-installed, then you just need to check the Read the Instructions, make sure you setup the Settings with your specific details for each one (when required), and make sure any pre-installed plugin is activated by clicking the word Activate in the Plugin’s summary on the Plugins page.

Step 3: For all other plugins, which are not pre-installed for you, click on the “Add New” button which is at the top of the Plugins Page.

Step 4: In the Search field, enter the name of a plugin you wish to install and hit the “Search” button.

Step 5: Look for the plugin on the search results page. You can verify it with the plugin’s name, Version (if you know it), Rating, and Description. The plugin should be at or near the top of the list of related plugins that come up in the results of your search.

Step 6: Beneath the Plugin’s name, you can see a link to read the plugin’s Details, and another link to Install the plugin.

Step 7: Click on Details to make sure the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress (Some fall out of date from time to time, until they update their software).

Step 8: If the plugin is out of date, do not install it. Instead, search for a similar plugin with a high rating and many downloads, and that is compatible with your version.

Step 9: Once you have verified that the plugin you wish to install is compatibile with your version of WordPress, click on Install either from the Plugins page, or from the Details page of the specific plugin.

Step 10: WordPress will then ask you to verify the installation instruction, by asking you “Are you sure you want to install this plugin?” in a popover window. If you do not wish to install the plugin, click “Cancel”. If you wish to install the plugin, Click “OK” to proceed.

Step 11: Once you have clicked OK, you will see the progress of the installation in a page that reads something similar to this:

Installing Plugin: CaptionPix 1.4.1

Downloading install package from https://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/captionpix.1.4.1.zip…

Unpacking the package…

Installing the plugin…

Successfully installed the plugin CaptionPix 1.4.1.

Activate Plugin | Return to Plugin Installer

The last line contains two links, which allow you to immediately activate the plugin, or to return to the Plugins page.

Step 12: If you installed the correct plugin, click on Activate Plugin. The plugin should then be activated.

Step 13: Go to the plugin’s Settings page (most plugins have one, but not all do), and set the details specific to your site and use of the plugin. Some plugins have just one page of settings, others have multiple pages. Be sure you go through all of the settings for each plugin, to optimize its use for your needs and your site’s performance. Examples of plugins with multiple Settings pages include: WordPress SEO by Yoast, GD Star Rating, Pretty Link, WordPress Backup 2 DropBox.

Step 14: Click on the Save button or link, usually found at the bottom of the Settings page.

Step 15: In most cases, you’re done installing the plugin at this point, and you may proceed to installing the next plugin, or go on to other matters.

Step 16: If you made an error and installed the wrong Plugin somehow, you can go the Plugin Installer page, and click on the “Delete” link which is beneath the short description of the Plugin in question.

Step 17: If you click on Delete, you will see a page with text similar to the following, except of course for the Plugin’s name and its Author’s name, which will depend on the plugin.

Delete Plugin

You are about to remove the following plugin:

Caption Pix by Russell Jamieson

Are you sure you wish to delete these files?

Click to view entire list of files which will be deleted

Step 18: Click Cancel to cancel the deletion, or click OK / Delete the Plugin.

Step 19: If you clicked on Cancel, you should be returned to the Plugin page.

Step 20: If you clicked on Delete WordPress should delete the plugin and its related files, and return you to the Plugins page.

Step 21: Proceed installing, setting up and activating further plugins that you need.

Congratulations! Once you have installed all of the plugins on this page’s list, you have installed the critical plugins for your WordPress website. Your site is now strong, flexible, and has massive potential for creating, distributing and monetizing unique, high quality content to enormous audiences around the world … and beyond! And why not? Astronauts like Chris Hadfield use the Internet in space, too.

Step 22: Now be sure to keep your plugins up-to-date. This you do by looking at the Admin Dashboard of column of administrative tools in the Admin area of the site. If there are any plugins to update, you will see a highlighted number (representing the number of plugin updates available) located next to the Plugins word of your Admin area’s vertical toolbar.

Step 23: On the Plugins or WordPress Updates page, you may update your plugins one at a time, or more than simultaneously, or even all of them at once.

Step 24: If any of your plugins fail to install properly, you will see a WordPress note about the error in most cases. Usually this is not a big deal, as you can often leave the plugin as-is until a better update becomes available. Or, you may deactivate the plugin, or even delete it, just as you would do in the steps written above. In some cases, a plugin update may actually temporarily cause your website not to function properly. In this case, the easiest thing to do is to delete the plugin. The next easiest thing to do is to Restore your website from your backup. Fortunately, if you installed the plugins on this page, then you have also installed a great, easy-to-use backup plugin, which allows you to quickly restore the site to its latest backup. Simply follow the instructions to restore your backup, and Presto! Your site is restored, and you may proceed.

Step 25: Keeping your overall WordPress core up-to-date is also vital. Fortunately, WordPress recently implemented an auto-updating technology. What this means is that since WordPress released version 3.8.1, standard installations (and even some customized ones) now have the ability to automatically update the WP Core, so that your website will always remain up-to-date with the main code that powers your wordpress website.

If you prefer watching a video tutorial about installing your site and various key plugins included on this page, checkout this highly useful clip by a fellow online content marketer, Matthew Woodward, who created and maintains his own great website about creating real value and earnings through web publishing.

In the next lesson, we will cover how to add high quality content, leading to the use of the best practices of SEO and Social Media.

As usual, if you like this article and care to help us in our efforts to put Google’s quality content claims to the test, then I beseech you, please share this page with your peers and colleagues on your social networks or any place where web publishers may find it beneficial.

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