photo credit: valcanno

You know it’s bad when you have to go searching for your WordPress password. It gets worse when you suddenly realise you haven’t posted to Twitter for two whole days. It’s like…what am I doing to myself? I know the world will stop if my followers don’t get at least six tweets a day from me, and all carefully timed to go out so they hit the global audience at breakfast, lunch and dinner, with careful attention to time zones.

But wait! There’s more. I haven’t written day 16 of the 21 articles I need to post to ezinearticles.com. I haven’t hit Squidoo, eHow, Yahoo Answers, Technorati and all the rest with my latest SEO attack.

Okay. Enough already. 2010 was all about process. 2011 will be all about sitting back and letting it happen. If only.

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Suddenly everybody’s promoting the use of video as a marketing tool and a better way of distributing information generally. But I have a problem with that.

Agreed, there are advantages to marketing via video. When selling a product:

• You can present directly to the prospective customer
• The customer can see you and make a judgement about the ‘authenticity’ of your message.
• You, as a marketer, can hold their attention and communicate directly.
• The customer, unless they hit the stop button, is forced to watch the whole presentation until they get the message.

While I’m not disputing all of the above, I really hope video doesn’t take too much away from the online experience.

Let me explain

I recently watched Rosalind Gardner’s video outlining her predictions for affiliate marketing in 2010. While the video was obviously meant to be a quick overview of her research and I appreciated it as such, I missed the functionality that a similar presentation in text would have provided.

To me, hypertext is the defining principle of the Internet. Where once we had flat one-dimensional text that could only be mined by delving further into physical libraries of information, we now have deep links that can take us practically anywhere we want to go.

For example, Rosalind mentions that “Forrester Research predicted that by 2014 affliate marketing would become a four billion dollar industry”. This is information I might want to read, but video, unlike hypertext, doesn’t let me take it any further. Certainly I can do a google search on Forrester Research and come up with the information myself, but somehow I now expect the online author to do that work for me.

Hypertext is what makes the Internet such a powerfully persuasive tool. By allowing us to drill down into deeper levels of information and ideas we can make better judgements about the facts presented to us.
Let’s not get too far away from that.

But don’t ignore video

Video is obviously great for people who have poor English skills and to pitch to those who just hate to read. As an instructional tool it’s brilliant. Screen captures, presentations, demonstrations of how things are done, these are all powerfull methods for getting a message across.

I intend to use video when it’s appropriate, but perhaps with straight-to-camera pieces it’s a good idea to include links underneath the multimedia box that point to the information referenced in the presentation. That way we get to take full advantage of all the Internet has to offer.

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I don’t know about you, but I get a lot of information sent to me by online marketers who have something to sell. Mostly it’s How To Make Money Online and these are either e-books or coaching programmes that usually promise the earth, or at least a six figure income.

These are mostly through email lists I’ve opted into at some time or other and decided, for various reasons, to keep subscribing. Why?  Well, one answer is that it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the competition, in fact it’s essential, but the other important point is that I like the way they communicate.

The online marketing niche is huge, and it takes a lot to keep good, informative content coming. It also takes quite a bit of talent to make that content unique. So most of the marketers I elect to follow have very different and persuasive styles, fresh ideas and imaginative approaches to marketing. This is not always easy to achieve and if you are intending to join this make money online party it’s worth making an effort to study the best of them to see just how they do it.

Today I’m looking at Christian Russell’s Next Level Blogger

Christian at Next Level Blogger offers a heap of free information to support his consulting and coaching services. Coaching takes the form of a one-on-one session by phone, with previous email contact to establish exactly what marketing concerns you have and how he can best help you.

I like this approach. It’s personal and sincere. The other thing I like about Christian is his great writing style. His articles are clear and entertaining. I seriously believe that there’s not much to say about making money online that hasn’t already been said about a billion times, but it’s not what we say but the way we say it that really counts. Christian Russell has a golden touch when it come to writing. He’s definitely worth a look.

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I wrote this message to Brian and Tony of Teaching Sells some time ago because I really wanted to tell them about my experience with their product. It’s absolutely the most comprehensive course you can find on the web for developing online teaching and membership sites.

“It’s taken a while as I’ve been working full-time until recently, which left only the weekends for Teaching Sells, but I now have a course almost ready for launch and another two on the back burner. When I began I knew nothing about online learning delivery systems, about the different hosting options, about the many ways to make content accessible to people, or about the many free tools available to get up and running. This has been invaluable. Thanks, Brian and Tony.” ~ Kay Rennie, ozlantis.com

The great thing about Teaching Sells is once you join you’ve got lifetime access. You get the first six modules over three months and the advanced modules follow weekly. Brian and Tony estimate that working part-time you can deliver an online teaching program in four months. Others have done it within eight weeks, but the most important point is that once you launch your course it’s going to keep making money.

The great thing about online teaching is that your audience grows with the web. Take a closer look at Teaching Sells to decide if you can make it work for you.

Click the banner above or the graphic below to see a great video presentation from Teaching Sells.

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