What it really comes down to is that I’m working on finding a way to bring good, solid marketing skills and authenticity, honesty and integrity together in my marketing messages.  Watch the video below to see exactly what I’m on about:

So, what are your thoughts on this? Of all the marketers you know, how many of them are closer to the “marketing machine” end of the scale and how many are more authentic?

And from which of those have you bought more?

I’d love to hear what you have to say, so leave a comment!

Cheers,

Here’s how this works:

Step 1: You watch the video below, in which Gary Vaynerchuk says a lot of awesome things, then makes a huge blunder and then says some more awesome things.

Step 2: Watch the next video, below the first one, where I rant about how incredibly wrong Gary was with his statements about Internet marketing.

Step 3: Read the few paragraphs at the end, where I elaborate on some essential points.

GO

Video Interview: Dean Hunt, Ciaran Doyle and Gary Vee

–

My Response

–

Some Important Points

First of all, in my video it almost comes off as if I’m saying all offline businesses or all big corporate businesses are unethical. That wasn’t my intention, of course.

My point is simply that there are unethical businesses and ethical businesses, online as well as off. Likewise, there “good” marketing and marketing that “just isn’t right” as Gary puts it. And this is also true online as well as offline.

Note that I’m not saying all  Internet marketing is good and holy. There’s a lot of spammy and scammy marketing going on, online. And unfortunately, the spammiest marketers are usually the most prevalent, the ones you encounter most often and the ones that you get annoyed by the most frequently.

Internet marketing as a whole is no better and no worse than non-Internet marketing. However, a large portion of online marketing consists of individuals or small groups that are very busy producing great value for free and building lasting relationships with relatively small groups of customers. And if more people get involved in this type of marketing and the paradigm shifts ever further in that direction, then that’s clearly a blessing for everyone involved.

At least, that’s my take on this. What do you think?

Step 4: Tell me what you think in the comments below.

Cheers,

Incoming search terms for the article:

• ciaran doyle scam
• gary vaynerchuk content SEO video
• gary vaynerchuk scam
• offline internet marketer from anywhere

I have read so many posts on the subject of “Content is King” lately, that I feel I need to chime in on this. Now, don’t worry, RQR will never turn into a “blogging about blogging” blog. Stuff like this will remain the exception and I’ll usually leave it to the blogging-bloggers.

For today, though, I want to shed some much-needed light on the “Content is King” theme. And yes, I’ll also explain why the hell I have a picture of 50 cent up there.

NOTE: This is, once again, a text/video hybrid post, so if you don’t feel like reading, just head on down and watch the video.

Challenging the Crown

The whole “Content is King” thing advocates that the most important thing you need to do as a blogger is create good content and everything else will eventually follow. In other words, content is more important than SEO, more important than promotion/marketing, more important than community interaction, etc.

Different proponents of CiK go to different lengths in how much they value content over everything else, but no matter how you look at it, content and content alone simply is not king.

–

Fiddy Knows

Here’s where 50 cent comes in. I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that Fiddy is an amazingly successful guy. Right, so he’s definitely made it in terms of getting attention, being in the spotlight, being talked about as well as making craploads of cash.

But guess what? His music is not the best music on the planet.

And that’s his content, by the way. Music is a musician’s content, just like blog posts are a blogger’s content. Fiddy did not make it to his level of success merely by merit of the quality of his music. I’m not saying his music is bad, I’m simply pointing out that the quality of his content is not in direct relation to how much success and money he has.

And the same is true for blogs. How much more traffic does a post on Problogger get, compared to a post on your blog? I’m guessing it’s probably in the thousands or tens-of-thousands times more. Is the content on Problogger a thousand times better than the content on your blog? Unless you’re just banging your head against the keyboard, the answer is: hell no!

It may be better, but it’s not better in proportion to how much more successful it is.

–

Biased Preachers

The problem is that many of the most adamant preachers of the CiK creed are completely biased. If you are a so called “A-list” blogger with a hugely popular blog, then sure, you don’t have to do any promotion of your content. Your vast army of readers is going to do more promotion than you could ever do yourself, anyway. And yes, the better the content you produce as an A-lister, the greater the response from you readership will be and the more promotion of your content you will see your readers do.

So, for an A-list blogger, content may truly be king. But not the same is not true 99.9% of bloggers.

In fact, the closer you are to being an A-lister, the more over-ruling content becomes, because more and more promotion of your content is being done by the people who already know you and your blog. But especially if you are starting out with a blog, just producing top content will simply not cut it.

Apart from content-promotion, there is another very important factor to online success.

–

You vs. Gary Vaynerchuk

Let’s look at a practical example: Check out this post by Gary: Secret 2.0 (go ahead, it’ll only take a few seconds)

That post got 208 retweets, 90 comments and around 50 links to it. The video has been viewed almost 8’000 times on Viddler.

Let’s just pretend that Gary had never made that video and that instead, you had made it and posted it. How would the reaction to that have been?

Well, I don’t know, of course, because I don’t know who you are (you should introduce yourself in the comments), whether you have a blog (though you probably do) and where that blog can be found (again, comments).

But I can give you an estimate of what would have happened if that video had been made by me and posted on my blog instead of by Gary on his. I’m guessing it would have gotten around 20 views, maybe as much as 40, no more than one comment and certainly no retweets or links.

And that’s partially because RQR has not been around for very long. But it’s also because content alone doesn’t matter.

The fact that I’m using something by Gary Vaynerchuk as an example here is actually slightly ironic, because he’s a great believer in marketing content and “getting in the trenches” as he calls it. Still, due to the nature of that video, it’s the perfect example for what I want to illustrate, here.

–

So Who’s King?

A statement like “X is King” is very compelling because it’s so very simple. Unfortunately, in real life, things tend to be a bit more complex. You can’t narrow the reason for a blog’s or website’s success down to one factor alone, no matter how much you would like to believe that there’s one “secret” to making it big-time.

If you really want to simplify things, then narrow it down to at least these three factors:

1. Quality Content
2. Excellent Marketing
3. Perceived Value/Perceived Authority

In more detail:

Quality Content
Pretty self-explanatory, really. If your content sucks, then any promotion you do for it will be fruitless. Of course, good content is a necessary basis for a successful site, but it doesn’t end there.

Excellent Marketing
This is where Fiddy really shines. That guy is an amazing marketer. You have to get maximum, positive exposure for your material. You have to give people who have no idea who you are or what you might be offering a chance to find your content. Otherwise, it simply doesn’t matter how good that content is.
Excellent marketing can mean a thousand different things and can be done in countless different ways, but the objective is always to reach new audiences and remind existing customers/readers to come back and check out your new stuff.

Perceived Value or Authority
This is a factor I’ve never seen mentioned by anyone else. See, the main reason a video gets more attention if it’s made by Gary than if it’s made by me (assuming identical content) is because is because of perceived authority and value. When Gary says something, it’s automatically a hundred times more awesome than when I say the same thing. Why? Because of what he calls personal branding. Because you know and respect and like who Gary is, but you don’t really know who I am.
Personal branding is not the only way to increase perceived value, however. Other common methods include making use of high prices, high-end looking design, association with authority figures or institutions and exclusivity (“limited offer”). And there are many, many more techniques that can be used to increase the perceived value or authority of any product or website.

Ultimately, none of these three factors are “King”, because if any one factor is missing, you’ve got nothing.

If your content sucks, everything else doesn’t matter.
If you don’t do any promotion whatsoever, you’ll be stuck with those four accidental viewers per day for a very long time.
If people don’t perceive your content to be valuable in any way and don’t take you seriously at all, they will only visit to have a laugh (and even that won’t last).

–

Dude, I’m a Marketer, Not a Blogger

Ok, so let’s take this a bit closer to Internet marketing land: The same principle holds true for any kind of content you put online. It’s true for a squeeze page, a sales-page, an ad (written or graphical) and anything else you can think of.

Unless you work on the quality of the content, promote that content intelligently and make sure that you and/or your offer come across as authoritative and valuable respectively, you’ll never see many visitors, comments or sales.

–

Here’s me ranting about this on video:

Let me know about your thoughts on this much-discussed topic. Do you agree? Or did I get it all wrong?

Cheers,

Incoming search terms for the article:

• http://richquickreview com/content-is-not-king/
• wordpress blogs

Notice how almost every get-rich-quick product promises to be a complete, step-by-step guide to take you from wherever you are now to unimaginable riches within the next few days? Ok, sorry for exaggerating a bit, there. But it is quite striking, how many complete instructions and guides are on offer. What I’ve noticed is that many get-rich-quick programs don’t offer much in the way of instructions and guidance. I’m seeing a misconception that needs to be cleared up, here.

Tips Are Not Instructions

You can get rich by making your own ebook, placing affiliate links inside it and selling it via a joint venture with someone who has a large list.

The above statement is absolutely true. This piece of advice really can make you a ton of money. But all it is, is a tip. It’s a tiny bit of advice that I am giving you, leaving the execution of this idea up to your own devices.

The thing is, I’ve been encountering quite a few such tips in online marketing products that are supposed to be guides. I take a look at a product that clearly claims to contain instructions on how to make money and I find a collection of tips, plus some filler. That’s not good.

Instructions would include detailed advice on how to make that ebook, what to put in it, what to leave out, how to do the research, what software to use to make the e-book and so on. It would include instructions on where to find good affiliate programs to include in the book and how to contact a marketer and negotiate a JV. If all that is included, then we can talk about calling them instructions.

In short:

• Tips = “Do this, do that.”
• Instructions = “Here’s how to do this: [detailed explanation]”

It’s Not All Bad

I don’t mean to bash tips here. Not at all. A tip can be very valuable. A tip can spark that one brilliant idea that takes your business to the next level. A tip might help you write better sales-copy or become an important element in your web-design.

Note, however, that for a tip to be of any use, the receiver of the tip already needs a foundation. A tip can help me improve an existing business, but it’s useless to me when I’m starting from scratch.

What I am criticising here is when products are clearly targeted at newbies claim to be complete instructions and then contain mainly tips. Tips are useful for the advanced and can be invaluable for experts, but they are not what anyone needs when they are starting out. The newbies need solid instructions to be able to get to the point where a tip becomes something useful to them as well.

Consider this when making a product. Don’t label a bunch of tips as a “complete guide”.
Also consider this when reading my reviews. I will generally call out products that are too much tip and not enough instruction. And any product that is sold as instructions and contains only tips will score some nice points on the Scam-Scale.