IPHONE ASKS - WHAT CAN YOU DO?

"The World Is Watching - Now What Will You DO?"

The IPHONE was released last night to lines of fans who waited for hours. You can find a gazilion articles posted about the "Jesus Phone" on the web. But that is not what this posting is going to be about..... specifically. I figured you can go just about anywhere to find some hype and heart thumping propaganda concerning this technological marvel.

Now that you have access to technology the REAL question becomes what do you do with it?

You already know from looking at my presentation on SEO in Michigan..... that 100 million viewers watch YOUTUBE.COM a day. That in itself is pretty encouraging. These people come from all sorts of niche markets. The whole thing in a microcosm is pretty dog gone exhilarating.

MEETING WITH A FILM MAKER
This week I had lunch with an independant film maker in the Detroit market. Our discussion went in several amazing directions and touched upon pop culture. We were discussing how pop movements were either captured or even fabricated in front of a camera. Our references scanned the whole spectrum including Saturday Night Live, The Who, and music sensations like THE CLASH.

At what point did the audience "SNAP" and go bananas when the Clash performed in the film "Rude Boy". The live performances were very dynamic to watch. I was focussing on the audience and what made them react so strongly. Likewise I also downloaded a Steve Martin live performance record from 1978 this week. This is an album I have not heard since I was ten years of age. I was amazed at the kind of response he was able to extract from his audience. Martin, before he became a film director, was the first comedian to pack thousands into arenas to give comedy performances.

There was something in each performance. Something memorable. This is what made them so fascinating to watch and listen to. Trying to capture that spark inspired me to continue into other forms of entertainment. I picked up Saturday Night Live - Season 1 - on DVD. Once again I am watching a group of unknown actors revolutionize a media format. To me this is very inspiring and its worth studying.

TYING IT ALL IN TOGETHER
What does studying the Punk Rock movement, Saturday Night Live and rebel comedians have to do with the IPHONE? It has everything to do with you being discovered and revealing your own uniqueness. My questions for you are as follows.....

1. At what point will your audience "SNAP"?
2. What kind of POP sensation will you make on the web?
3. What kind of mass following can YOU attract?

Ted Cantu posted this on Saturday, the DAY AFTER... June 30, 2007 at 7:49 am

The Misunderstood World of the SEO

"Online Life As We Know It Is About To Change"

The recent UK magazines kicked out a minor ruckuss this week with their bold proclamations of online marketing. There is evidence of change in the air in many areas of online marketing. Its not just with the Google Universal Search..... The new techniques that were mentioned in this publication went a little beyond what we typically view as online marketing.

We were exposed to Web 3.0 - higher forms of podcasting, blogging, MySQL and tying this all together in the effort of getting more web traffic and online customers. Even for a seasoned professional this would come off a bit as overkill (?)

I know professionals who work in this business who didn't bother to pick up last years edition. They were in a state of overwhelm just by reviewing the contents of the magazine. But this years edition is a lot more intense.

Online Training At Home
A recent training program for internet savvy marketers only listed SEO down to just a few sentences. The rest of the course picked up on some pretty elevated areas. Right after a couple of text book definitions of online marketing the course got more indepth. These areas had very little to do with any typical SEO practices.

In other recent news you just cannot escape the coming of the IPHONE. The influence of video and audio messages that you design will open new doors of opportunities for new sales. This is flipping the business models of broadcasting upside down.

YET, you really do need a strong SEO based delivery system to get your media out into the public.... One that will enforce your viewpoints upon your public. One that has the ability to bounce back up once it has been knocked down a few pegs on the search engines....

Posted by Ted Cantu on on June 25, 2007 at 11:31 pm

The Importance of Being Persistent

"Take A Tip From The Dollar Bin -- In This Case..... The Candy Butchers"

A few years back... or.. back in the day.... Or as my friend Jeff says, "A little Later in the Day..." was a golden gem discovered in the bottom of the dollar bin. It was a little band called, THE CANDY BUTCHERS.....

We used to play a game in the city. A bunch of old friends would hit the record stores in Chicago and get anything that was cheap or looked interesting. The rules were they had to be bands you never heard of before other than that anything goes. We would get a good case of beer and meet back at my pad and hang out and take turns playing tracks. Sometimes we would laugh our heads off and sometimes we would find real gold.

When, "Live at La Bonbonniere" came out it barely made a blip on the radar. When it was released it slipped under the pop radar, and forget about any airplay. Once I listened to it the songs sort of jumped off the disc and reminded me of Squeeze and had plenty of amazing pop hooks to it. Mike Viola, the lead singer, struck an instant chord with me. I was a fan.

This album was recently admitted to ITUNES. Even though it was recorded years ago and had virtually no fan base to speak of this band has made an impression though persistance. Course it was on David Letterman and had toured consistently. The album was recorded in a little deli in lower Manhattan and there were no people in the place except for the occasional waitress or dishwasher in the background. But the music was what sold it.

THE POWER OF HAVING YOUR OWN MEDIA

Sure it may take time to get discovered for what you do. But just like the Candy Butchers you can have your own version of success. It is all about getting canned media and having it ready to go. No matter if you are in a band, or are an author, or have a product or service..... This is what you need to have.... a real, Power of Stick-to-it-tuitiveness.

This can have a real power over your audience. Just the fact that a lot of peole out there are audio or visual minded people should be a clue. There are a lot of people who really don't like to read. Take a clue from that statistic and do something with your media to make yourself known. It is very important to take this under consideration.

There is a lot of money you are leaving on the table.

Here is a question for ya.... How many of you have a podcast out there? Why not reverse the model here and type out a transcript of your podcast show and post it on your web site? The meta data and subject material will be fresh for the search engine spiders.

And you just may become an overnight sensation.....? Eh? Now I got you thinking.

Ted Cantu posted this on June 25, 2007 at 11:34 pm and can be found at http://www.1seomichigan.com

The Validity of YOUR Media

"In 2007 - We're All Stars"

Cheers in advance for everyone who takes heed and listens to this message. We are all stars in this modern age thanks to all the advances in digital medial. There are also no limits as we dig our heels deeper into this modern culture.

This is why everyone who is anyone should have their own media these days. It can come in the following forms.....

* Interview
* Video Interview

And before you start to worry about the obvious.... (Like how many people are going to read or listen to your broadcast when it first airs) make sure your doubts are in the right place. Some of your concerns are valid and some of them are not based in the true media thought.

THE CLASSIC 1970'S INTERVIEWS
When some of the biggest pop idols in entertainment history gave interviews there wasn't a whole lot of fanfare. Take the case of John Belushi when he interviewed for the role of Bluto in, "Animal House". He showed up in a hotel room with John Landis and ordered 9 shrimp cocktails and 4 club sandwhiches and left before the food showed up.... leaving Landis with the bill. But that interview went on to become the thing of legend.

Similarly the Sex Pistols, (John Rotten and Sid Vicious) were interviewed by David Hartman for ABC's Good Morning America in 1977. This was before the age of VCR's and that interview was somewhat forgotten about. But it made many appearances in books that were later written about the band.

I could go on with stories and interviews about Lenny Bruce and John Lennon and a whole host of other performers. The media is what lived on and was quoted in other periodicals and lived on in other media. The smart performers had a lot of their own media on file and it was later used by writers and journalists.

The Beatles, were created by the media..... more or less. Look into it.
for more info check out the book, SHOUT by Phillip Norman

What this means for you - as a business leader is as every bit significant. Now you can create your own media and spin your own yarn about your practice. You need a story to sell and to be able to stand on some form of positioning. Solid media can give that to you.

I like it for another reason.

It allows me to stay off the phone and pursue other things. My media does the selling for me and MAN does it do the job. I am serious as I write this for you today. Creating canned media is the way to go if you want to free up your time, add some ease to your days and create more concrete solid sales. Ahem.... instant clout.

Take a deep breath and focus on what kind of image you want to create.

Posted by Cantu on June 21, 2007 at 10:03 pm

POPULARITY FOR SALE

"The Great Walls of Audio - Video Houses Are Trembling"

The earliest sign of changing times was the demise of Detroit's audio - video community rag, "The Big Idea". Without so much as a, "goodbye". This hoity toity tell it like it ain't periodical bit the dust... HARD. And unfortunately for them nobody shed a tear. Worse, a lot of people in the business of media didn't even know who they were.

Strange days.

I wish I could have been smart and saved the cuss out phone calls I used to get on my 800 number. I cannot tell you who they were from but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was from some high ups in traditional media. This was around the time when I was talking to a lot of execs in local radio from CBS, Clear Channel and getting feedback from pillars in the online community. The message was for me to basically...shut my cake hole.. and quick.

But I never had any intention of shutting up my mouth. The rants only made me tell more of the truth and go out of my way to help small business in this world of arrogant media assheads and bully's.

I'm still here.

And in that time more traditional media houses have closed up shop and locked their doors. For good. More disturbing is the recent lay offs in Detroit Advertising arenas. This is something I want to shed a little light on.

THE DARK DAYS AFTER THE DOT COM ERA
There was a lot of fear in the days following the dot com era. I can tell you first hand that the party was definitely over. Too much money has been spilled and lost. The streets were literal war zones and the heat was felt on both the East and West coast. I was there. I was in NYC when all hell broke loose and tons of venture capital was literally burned up.

Michigan never really got it right. In fact, as I write this many media firms are hell bent on keeping up with the newest finagling in Flash. There never seems to be any focus on what it takes to get and keep a customer online. But in the end, it doesn't really matter.

Since the good talent was now too expensive to obtain. Agencies had to rely on mediocre low paying talent to fill up its cubes. This digital fluffy had nothing to do with OPT In customer relationship building as it did was take the money and run with it. What we ended up with in Michigan was a real washed out version of the dot com era. This digital gibberish was a pale shade of the real bad boys who ran the scene right into the ground. Now that second wave of talent is feeling the sting by being let back onto the street due to a sagging auto industry.

STREET FIGHTING - AMERICAN STYLE
The University of Michigan has recently appointed itself as experts in the field of Search Engine Marketing which is laughable. The heads who run their departments have no accreditation in Search Engine Optimization --- have lied about MY past by saying they met with me in person, which is not true -- but more importantly the consumer should be aware of this monstrosity. They stand in the way of getting totally screwed.

Other SEO firms have stepped up and said irreverant things - even some arguing that RSS feeds were "simply not important". This statement is beyond ridiculous and its how mobile media gets distributed and played.

The big media houses can create car commercials and rack up a huge budget. But these same houses have no real way of getting their material distributed properly. This is a situation that I have continued to see in large major markets. So you will end up with a large, "Titanic" production with no real way of distributing it online.

WHATS WRONG WITH DVDS?
The problem with creating cheap DVDs and mailing them out is that a lot of people won't play them. Its not that the material on them is not any good, when in fact it is fine. We are entering a new wave of human nature and its taking laziness to a whole new level. People are not opening their mail, dvd's never get played, and product and services are never exposed. There are too many steps in getting the marketing message into the right hands.

By going completely digital with the message we can change this. Now we can channel it through online distribution networks. We can assure that our marketing messages get played.

You'll have to do your own street fighting and ask the important questions yourself. You can market smart or continue to support these all day - Adult Day Care Centers, (aka Advertising Agencies - complete with catered food and video game systems for bored on the job 30 somethings) to get your marketing messages out.

Hooray for Youtube.com and Hooray for the new IPHONE.

Now, you got a fair chance of winning this street fight.

Ted Cantu posted this on June 21, 2007 at 12:37 pm

Are You Sure You’re Core Audience Is Listening?

How Are You Found on Google?

After just reading some of the new Google search capabilities I really have to wonder.
Well, in fact I have just two main thoughts.

1.Does it really matter if you are on Google’s first page or not?
2. Are you at least indexed in Googles main index?

I think number two has a little more validity in the grand scheme of things. You see there are any number of ways your audience can search for you on Google. You should probably try picking up THE LOST GOOGLE MANUAL or GOOGLE: THE MISSING MANUAL as they will open your eyes to what’s around you. The real question lies in how are your audience members out there searching for you?

What words are they using is only half of the equation. But there are any number of ways that a person can look for a company using Google technology. You can use usergroups, niche directories, and using some of the newer services they provide.There are a lot of people out there who just type in sentence fragments to get what they want from the search engines.

The KEI words these days are getting LONGER AND LONGER….

But that is alright you just need to be aware of how people are using those
keywords to locate your business online……

To be continued……

Posted by Ted Cantu on June 19, 2007 at 8:08 pm

REBEL MARKETING - EXPLAINED

"WE'RE LIVE ON THE IKE ENGELBAUM SHOW - JUNE 07,07"

This episode is very subdued but don't let that fool ya. The information that we touch upon in this clip could flip your business upside down. We go into why the whole REBEL MARKETING concept is one you should be aware of and utilize. This is what great marketing is all about.

By using common everyday items like the IPOD and the new IPHONE we are able to tap into hidden niche markets. Now when you combine those elements with GOOD SOLID SEO strategies you have a winner on your hands. Now we can steer that campaign right into the hands of qualified buyers and people who want to fully utilize what you are selling!

This system is powerful because:

* We bypass broadcast media
* We don't pay for any airtime
* We connect to niche markets
* We do not have to pay monthly contract fees

This thing rocks.... Check us out....

Ted Cantu created this post on June 11, 2007 at 7:13 am.

THE AGE OF INSTANT SATISFACTION

"This Goes Beyond Just Downloading POP MUSIC !!"

As I write this post I have just downloaded the entire Clash Catalog from ITUNES. I also grabbed some early punk classics this week by the DAMNED and Generation X. I am getting revved up for this new romp with REBEL MARKETING..... But more on that later.....

Its inspiring that we are living in an age of INSTANT SATISFACTION. This goes far beyond just instant downloaded songs for your IPOD and IPOD car stereo system! This type of instant gratification can come in the form of getting your web pages INSTANTLY INDEXED !!

If you haven't heard this new presentation you can hear about

how to get your Michigan Business off the ground .. and into the online orbit !!!

The other thing that you will have to get used to is the ability and freedom to get your marketing messages out there in the pubilc eye, (both audio and video). Lets get straight to the point this is going to cause a disruption into the radio and broadcasting industries.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Just recently the New York Times ran this piece about how you can buy cheap radio airtime on Ebay. Imaging going to Ebay to bid for cheap airtime. I just found this in the June 6th edition and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

Just a year ago I was put into the CLOSING ROOM and interrogated into buying a 40 thousand dollar block of airtime. This was back when I was trying to get my Detroit area radio show off the ground. I had this miserable experience thrown on my lap no less than two times. I barely got out of the room in one piece. I was shaken and very upset. If you think used car salesmen have no heart.... (and.. most of them don't) they are harmless in comparrison.

This new approach to getting your marketing message out there tips the typical broadcasting world upside down and inside out. As a struggling company you have got to love that.

Even if your company is not struggling you can still save a fortune by placing your media into these distribution channels. The overall effect is just stunning. You no longer have to wait for a miniscule 10% return rate on your marketing efforts. You will know in a very short amount of time if you have an active audience for your products, goods and services.

In a very short amount of time. And the IPHONE is going to further elevate this knowledge base to you. The entire game as we know it is going to change in radical proportions.

Ted Cantu posted this on June 6, 2007 at 8:52 and can be found at http://www.1seomichigan.com

Inside The SEO Search Quest Studio

"STOP WASTING TIME WITH ONLINE TRICKERY THAT FAILS TO GET RESULTS!"

SEO Search Quest has posted a new 30 minute online tutorial about how search engine optimization can help boost -- Michigan business! This insightful search engine optimization flash movie will show you how real SEO techniques can help your site grow online.

This in depth view at how podcasting, seo, and rss feeds can dramatically boost your online rankings in Google. If you have questions on:

* How to get more customers online
* How to beat heavy broadcasting fees
* Creating a bridge between your product and a niche audience
* How to eliminate wasteful spending online

This very unique presentation can show you how to connect your message to IPOD users!
http://www.1seomichigan.com/2.html

Ted Cantu posted this on June 6, 2007 at 10:08 pm and can be found at http://www.1seomichigan.com