Meyerson - Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars.

Entrepreneur Press, Publisher

Cover Design: Andrew Welyczko

Production and Composition: Eliot House Productions

2015 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Business Products Division, Entrepreneur Media Inc.

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.

ebook ISBN: 978-1-61308-302-4

Contents

TO THE Superstars in this book for sharing their wisdom and insights into our changing digital world. Special thanks to Barb Rozgonyi for inspiring me to compile this edition of the Superstars series.

To Jillian McTigue and the team at Entrepreneur Press for supporting my work for the last decade. Karen Billipp and Charlotte Evans for their expert editing. To Craig Valentine, Laurie Ashner, Tina Cook, Michael Neuendorff, and our Certified Guerrilla Marketing and World Class Speaking Coaches. And finally to Steve Jobshis ideas and innovations have inspired me for decades in my careers in business, writing, and music.

IN 2005, the internet had already begun to profoundly change the world of business, yet for many online entrepreneurs the roadmap to success was unclear. In response, I complied the first edition of Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, a book that celebrated the ways in which the most successful marketers on the web had blazed trails, set records, and created benchmarks to make the internet overwhelmingly relevant to modern business practices and the business world.

In 2010, as social media began to explode and once again changed business as we know it, I developed a second book, Success Secrets of the Social Media Marketing Superstars. The wisdom of a new group of social web experts including Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mari Smith, and Keith Ferrazzi illuminated this edition of the Superstars series, showing us how to navigate the emerging and changing social landscape.

Now, in 2015, the social internet has not only transformed the business world but the world at large, too. Once an interesting tool, the internet has done much to redefine the way in which we learn and the way in which we relate to one another as humans.

As essential as internet technology and social communications are to our businesses, though, they are still mysteries to many. And to make matters more confusing, influential sites like Facebook keep changing the rules of the road. The proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has also created a new style of consumption on the web that also must be taken in account.

So once again, with this new installment of the Superstar series, Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, we turn the spotlight on the constantly changing landscape that is online marketing, and the men, women, and technologies that continue to define and redefine it.

May the insights in this book help you reach your goals and help you create the life you truly desire.

Mitch Meyerson

Scottsdale, Arizona

Get your free bonus content including audio interviews, downloads, and more by visiting www.MasteringOnlineMarketing.com

SECTION
I

Brian Clark

BRIAN CLARK began publishing online in 1998, and by 1999 he had his first successful business built by what is now known as content marketing. Between 2001 and 2005, Brian went on to launch two additional businesses, which attained even greater success. In January 2006, he started a one-man blog called Copyblogger, which quickly evolved into an influential digital trade magazine for the online industry and became the catalyst for the multimillion-dollar software and training company he heads today as CEO. www.Copyblogger.com

In this Chapter, Youll Discover:

How to create marketing that people actually want

What a personal media brand is and why you want one

How to give away what youre selling for fun and profit

Why leadership is the key to lead generation

How to maximize your marketing wealth with new media

The reason youll likely succeed (big), if you start now

Without a rainmaker, youre in trouble.

This was true for the Native Americans living on sun-bleached plains. When the life-giving rivers began to dry up from lack of rain, life became hard.

The plants withered, the animals weakened, and the tribe despaired.

Its also true for businesses trying to survive and thrive in any economy. The rainmaker is the one who brings in the clients and customers, the revenue, and the profits. Its the rainmaker who saves their own tribe from the withering despairand dire consequencesof failure.

In all cultures, the rainmaker is a powerful person. Secure, respected, and paid in full.

Ultimately, the one who makes it rain makes the rules.

The traditional business rainmaker typically enjoyed some unfair advantage outside of standard channels; this is how they made it rain. The right family, the right Ivy League connections, the right country club membership. Privilege perpetuating more privilege.

The new rainmaker enjoys a different kind of unfair advantage, except in this case its now available to anyone who understandsand, more importantly, acts onhow new business generation works today. This unfair advantage is now built on the principles of attracting and engaging an online audience, not the circumstances of your birth.

An Improbable Run at Entrepreneurial Success

In my past life, I was an attorney. I didnt much enjoy the practice of law, but looking back now, I realize that I learned two fundamental rules of smart business while doing my time in the big law firm environment.

In addition to realizing that the practice of law often had little to do with the actual law, I found out that success as an attorney often had little to do with technical proficiency. In other words, the best lawyers werent necessarily the highest paid or most powerful attorneys.

The lawyers with their name in the firm title were the most powerful, because they had the clients. Other attorneys worked for them to handle these clients.