There are so many things in this post by Chris Heuer that resemble my own thoughts lately, I simply couldn’t believe my eyes as I read. I’d like to think I would have written something like this eventually, but now I don’t have to and can simply continue working on pushing the vision into reality.

Give it a read. It’s fantastic from start to finish (hat tip to Brogan for the heads up).

While this represents only a small part of the overall scope of Heuer’s post, I found this snippet particularly relevant to what I’ve been working on lately:

As we have seen with reality television, the hybrid of overly produced “barely based on reality” does not hold sway with people for long. The deep human desire for genuine connections with the hero’s journey via Joseph Campbell will not tolerate gimmicks or fools for long. Genuine human drama, ‘How To’ content, insightful commentary, truly funny comedy, emotionally charged entertainment, engaging conversations, factual news of the world and stories well told will rule the day.

Emphasis mine.

I’ve been talking about Tubetorial a lot lately with people, as you might imagine. And most people instantly get it.

We try hard to make these video tutorials visually interesting while they also teach. We might even try to make you laugh (or at least smile) in the process.

But Tubetorial videos don’t look like overly-polished television productions for a very important reason.

And they never will.

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So, let’s say you’re being a good Internet marketer and doing your search engine keyword research. You’re looking for new search trends that you can profit from.

Maybe you’ll start a brand new blog, or even develop an information product.

While poking around in the free Yahoo/Overture Keyword Selector Tool, you discover a phrase that is getting 173,359 searches per month. You think you’ve hit the jackpot.

Hopefully you verified that search count with a more reliable source before you started work, because it turns out that a more accurate accounting for that phrase might be closer to zero.

In the course of shooting an episode of my 7 Steps to Creating and Selling Niche Information Products series at Tubetorial, I happened across just that scenario.

Watch the video here to learn why you should never rely on the results from the Yahoo/Overture Keyword Selector Tool, or any other keyword research tool that pulls solely from Yahoo’s results. And there’s some other stuff in there about finding a strong topic for an information product, too.

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As a follow-up to my last post, I thought it might help to revisit this excerpt from Viral Copy:

During eBay’s rapid rise, the company nurtured a quaint rumor about its origins, claiming that founder Pierre Omidyar had created the site in 1995 so that his fiancee could trade Pez candy dispensers with other collectors.

Alas, the Pez myth, it was later revealed, had been fabricated by eBay’s public-relations director in 1997 to generate buzz about the site. Source: Anecdotage

It’s up to you whether your story is a complete fabrication. I tend to lean aggressively toward complete honesty, delivered in a creative fashion. Ethics aside, the blogosphere will call you out at the first opportunity. And it won’t be pretty.

No matter what, you must have a story that people want to hear, and then you’ve got to live that story. In that regard, eBay CEO Meg Whitman was often photographed with Pez collections and had more than 100 dispensers displayed in the lobby at eBay headquarters, despite the fact that the company origin was a fairy tale.

Now, the eBay origin story may seem like only a little white lie, but it’s actually a big lie. Whether it be science, religion, comic books or companies, origin stories are hugely important, and that crafty PR director knew it.

Because the lie was big, and because eBay lived the lie, it worked.

Click to continue →

While it’s been a hot topic since Hotmail went huge, the buzz about viral marketing has never been stronger thanks to both social media and ubiquitous online video. No doubt every MBA with an emphasis in marketing is talking about “viral stories” in between latte slurps.

As a painful example of a story that went viral big and fast, think about how many people knew the name John Mark Karr prior to two weeks ago.

Click to continue →

“Television is a medium because anything well done is rare.”

I’ve always liked that clever little quote from comedian Fred Allen. As a radio star of the 1930s and 40s, Allen may have been a bit biased, but here we are over half a century later, and many of us wholeheartedly agree with his sentiments about the overall quality of television. And despite the huge amount of buzz about it in 2006, you could likely replace “television” with “online video” and the statement would be even more obvious.

It’s certainly cool to watch those rare talents making great online video entertainment and news shows, such as zefrank, Amanda Congden, Cali Lewis, and of course the Rocketboom folks, just to name a few of the more prominent. And You Tube means anyone can be a star, so everyone’s got to try. Even Paris Hilton.

Of course, there are other uses for online video that have huge potential beyond entertainment. Some have already started using it as a teaching tool, and I personally think that’s where many big opportunities can be had using this powerful communication medium.

Back at my 6 month Copyblogger milestone, I mentioned in passing that I was working on a new project. It’s a video blog, and we’re just about ready to launch it.

(Which is code for ‘there’s so much left to do I don’t see how we’ll ever get it done’)

The site provides video tutorials that teach people how to effectively create, publish, market, and do business online. You can sign up for the feed or for email alerts, and you’ll be the first to receive the initial tutorials when we go live.

Oh yeah… it’s called Tubetorial.

Did I mention it’s free?

Apparently, Stride Gum gets how this whole viral video thing works.

After you watch the video (it’s worth it), and read through the 3,876 (!) comments, visit Matt’s site and get the whole story.

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