The New Media « Direct Response Marketing

Oct 16 2012

The New Media

By Rich Gorman One Comment

Do you know what drives me to get out of bed every day with fire in my veins? It’s the same thing that drives me to work 18 hours a day, weekends, and holidays. It rents space in my mind when I’m with my family and hanging out with friends…

It’s the most precious and sacred liberty We The People have.

It’s The First Amendment. Taken from Wikipedia: ”The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances.”

When I was younger I always wondered what all of the Constitutional Law gripe was about. The importance of freedom of the press and freedom of speech was completely foreign to me. Who really cared about all of this crap, I mean after all it’s something that we all kind of take for granted…that is until we experience a grave miscarriage of justice in our lives and don’t have a way to have our voices heard….

Let me tell you, the most precious right we have is The First Amendment. Freedom of the press allows Americans to oust corruption, voice our views, and change public opinion. It allows for James to put Goliath in check!

Look back 10 years ago to 2002. Newspapers, magazines, and radio were thriving media channels. The barrier-to-entry to the media was so high that it was prohibitive for 99.9% of Americans.

Fast forward to 2012. Oh boy have things changed!!! These days an average joe can out a corrupt government worker with 3 clicks on an anonymous complaint board. Or an unhappy laborer can start a strike via YouTube.

When a story is launched on one of the many channels available to us, we have the ability to take it “viral” and reach millions of fellow Americans at little to no cost!!! That my friends is the beauty of The First Amendment!

I’ve toiled away relentlessly for the past 3 years to build a very strong media network. With 1 call or email, we can launch an all-out campaign to broadcast a story all over the world. The buzz that it creates has the ability to significantly improve the reputation of an individual, increase conversions, and create enormous positive buzz around an issue. On the flip side of the coin, the media effect can get someone indicted, terminate a corrupt government employee’s job, or turn millions of people against an injustice.

This my friends is The New Media!

I encourage all of the readers of Direct Response to take part in The New Media. Harness its power and embrace your liberty.

Here’s some insight into the New Media:

1. Online News Networks: Newspapers are defunct. These days when people want instant access to the news, they jump online.

The Direct Response team has acquired, built, and partnered with a litany of online news websites. With 1 click we can launch and syndicate a story across thousands of other news sites. These stories instantly rank in SERPs.

Here’s an example of an online news website that is operated a well-known affiliate marketer: The Inquistr.

2. Bloggers: We don’t know anything about blogging, do we Bloggers are more trusted than celebrity endorsements. Our team has spent countless hours developing relationships with over 400 PR3+ bloggers spread across dozens of industries. One of my clients couldn’t believe how quickly we broke a story on the #1 political blog in Pennsylvania. Hell, all of us bloggers band together. They send us stories, we send them stories. What’s the old saying, you scratch my back…

Here’s a quick story about how effective blogging is. I launched a story on Direct Response about a bully I knew from my childhood. The story went viral and cost this man his job and prohibited him from gaining new employment. He contacted our admin to take the story down. The message never gets to me and the story stayed up…

A few months goes by and I finally catch wind of what’s happening, discovering his issues with employment. Hell, this is a guy that I became friends with in college. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt him in his adult life. I took the article down and apologized for the heartache that it caused him.

The lesson learned here is an important one: The New Media effect has broad implications. An innocuous article has the power to travel the globe and create disaster. Before publishing content online you should carefully consider the ripple effects it will create.

3. News Wires: Press releases are one of the greatest vehicles to break a story. With the advent of massive distribution channels like MarketWire, BusinessWire, PRWeb, etc., it is now easier than ever to blast out your news across the globe!

I highly recommend that you retain professional, journalistic writers to create your releases. Effective press releases are part art, part science.

4. Minisites: Creating exact match sites that have social media activity, keyword specific content, and strategic backlinks can easily rank online for search terms. i.e. Do a Google search for “Rick Santorum.” On page 1 is Spreading Santorum, an egregious listing which has undoubtedly caused enormous harm to Rick Santorum.

Engaging, highly controversial minisites gain and hold rank in SERPs. Here’s a great story RE Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s Google challenges.

5. Social Media: Tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Google+, LiveJournal, Tagged, Ning, and MeetUp allow us to share information across the world. In the past 2 years social media has become so relevant that Google, Yahoo, and Bing’s algorithm now use “social signals” when ranking digital assets.

When promoting a cause, social media is most effective when you have teams driving consistent daily activity across all major channels. i.e. Our team will send out signals via Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, and several other SM channels on a daily basis. We formulate the messaging in an engaging fashion that creates followers, fans, and likes. The viral phenomenon from social media is amazing!!!

My team has acquired and is in the process of building out some very exciting social media tools. Stay tuned for our latest acquisition, Completed.com!!!

6. Bookmarking: Taken from Wikipedia: “Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to organize, store, manage and search for bookmarks of resources online. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users.It also helps to promote your sites by networking with other social book markers and collaborating with each other.”

There’s a number of programs you can purchase to automatically bookmark content on sites such as Digg, Reddit, StubleUpon, and Delicious. We use Bookmark Demon (cheesy sales page but great product).

7. Guest Posting: The best way to build relevant, highly authoritative links is through guest posting. In a nutshell, our guest posting campaigns are tiered:

Tier 1: Highly relevant and engaging guest posts on industry specific PR5+ websites. Google loves these articles and treats each link we build like gold.

Tier 2: Engaging guest posts placed on non-industry specific PR3+ websites. Google values the links that we build off of these articles, however the links don’t carry nearly as much weight.

Guest posting is FREE and allows the common man to rank stories above the Associated Press!

8. Public Relations: Welcome PR 2.0. Traditional PR firms are either dead or evolved. New age PR firms pitch the media with SEO in mind. This is a great way to build links on authoritative sites such as TechCrunch, Topix, and The Huffington Post.

Through deep rolodexes these agencies are able to shortcut their way to national press. My 2 favorite firms are Edelman and SSPR.

9. Complaint Boards: Anonymous complaint forums are one of the most effective ways to air out dirty launch. Well written complaints that strategically place the name of the offender in the title and body can gain & HOLD RANK for highly competitive keywords.

Moreover, due to federal law (Communication Decency Act of 1996), complaint boards have little to no obligation to take down libelous content. You can take legal action against the author of the content, but the forums themselves are pretty much immune to civil liability.

Here’s a list of the top 10 most effective complaint boards:

10. Online Forums/Message Boards: Online network community building is a fantastic way to align people to a cause. Industry or interest specific forums often create a cult-like following.

This is what a PR nightmare started on an online forum looks like:

Step 1: A new, highly controversial subject is raised.

Step 2: Members of the community start to chime in.

Step 3: Strong responses create buzz.

Step 4: Bloggers start chiming in on the subject.

Step 5: People start commenting on the blog posts.

Step 6: Tweets, YouTube Videos, Facebook posts start running wild.

Step 7: The AP picks it up and blasts it across millions of viewers.

Step 8: Litigation ensues, causing more and more activity….

Meet Sanjay Sabani

A few years ago I met up with my friend Sanjay Sabnani at a Think Tank event. Sanjay is a serial entrepreneur with a longstanding passion for online network community building. He acquired his first online message board, General Mayham, in 2002. He continued acquiring forums until he decided that it was time to focus on turning this portfolio into a business with the launch of CrowdGather in 2008.

As the moderator of dozens of popular forums, Sanjay opened my eyes to the effectiveness of forums. In a nutshell, Sanjay has direct access to millions of forum members. He can reach them through Moderator posts, emails, and group messages. The possibilities are endless…

I highly recommend that you start your own forum. A great place to acquire well-established forums is Flippa (my favorite place to buy & sell websites).

BTW, my favorite online marketing forums are WickedFire, IMGrind, Stack That Money, and WarriorForum. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or are new to the industry, you’ve probably already checked them out

11. Wikipedia Writers: Wiki is the #5 site on the web and attracts 450,000,000 users per month. For an online reputation management professional, Wikipedia is the hardest website in the world to suppress. It’s a true bear.

My partner works with a team of established Wiki Authors that have the ability to create, edit, and moderate Wiki pages. I highly recommend working with long-time Wiki editors that are trusted inside the Wikipedia network. It’s a great way manage Wiki results!

The New Media has leveled the playing field. Join the community today and start having your voice heard!!!