Ever wonder what it takes to build a strong brand and get your message across to your target audience? Why is it that some brands become household names whilst other disappear by the wayside or are content with being average and mediocre.The secret to effective marketing and building your brand is consistency!

Firstly you need to develop a marketing strategy and then implement it and once you have set the marketing plan in motion, you must keep it going or you won’t see the results. Lots of people start marketing their brand, product, or service and then only after a month don’t see the results and start wondering if it’s working and pull out of their marketing thinking it is a waste of money but this is not the correct approach.

Marketing rarely provides short term benefits but if you are willing to push through the beginning you will see the results start to flow. The reason you must continue your marketing efforts is because that’s what it takes to get your message into peoples heads.  Remember that we are all constantly targeting with advertising everyday and we learn to filter the majority of it out but if you continually market then you will start to make an impression on your audience and your brand becomes familiar to them. People go where they feel secure, and what they know, and what is familiar to them. That’s why McDonalds does so well because it’s easier to go there when your on a trip than trying to find another takeaway that you don’t know will be any good. Better to stick with the devil you know than the one you don’t.

If people don’t know who you are, then they are unlikely to do business with you.  Another reason to be consistent in your marketing efforts is because if you don’t your competitors will. Who ever gives in to their marketing efforts is set come second to those that continue to market their brand. To continue marketing you need to allocate an affordable amount of your operating revenue to market your brand, an amount that you can afford to continue with. Set practical budgets for your marketing and build it as your profits grow. This will bring long term growth and profits and from that you can continue to allocate a percentage so that over time your marketing budget grows and you will develop a strong brand and longer reach to your audience.

Understand that everybody in any business needs to market and those that don’t are most likely to be left behind. Stay consistent in your marketing and prepare to continue for the long term to see the rewards and stay ahead of the competition.

Being successful is really tough work. Ask any successful person and the majority will tell you 18 hour days, sacrificed sleep, worked weekends, and did whatever it would take to achieve their goals and internet marketing isn’t any different. Everyday we have ideas, ideas that we think would work if we could plan it out and implement it however there are only so many hours is a day and only so many projects that you can successfully manage at anyone time.

Sometimes we just need to step back, take a deep breath, and allow ourselves to focus on what we are trying to achieve and how that fits in to our long term goals. How many times have you had more than a handful of uncompleted projects and still start new ones only to find that you are leaving a trail of incomplete projects behind you without ever really making any forward progress.

Getting your ideas to completion is probably more important than starting new ones because without finished projects you don’t have anything to monetize and you if you don’t finish them, you have just wasted your time and efforts.

So what do you do with all those ideas that keep popping into your head? Grab a box, and when you get those ideas, write them down with a summary of how you imagine it to work and put it in the box. When you complete one of your projects you can go to the box and pick out one of the ideas and decide if your ready for the new challenge.

I don’t know if it’s just me, all webmasters or the general population but I’m pretty much fed up with thinking about what I do to market a web site and always wondering if the site was going to take a dive in the rankings. Maybe it’s because I spend so much time doing client SEO work, maybe it’s all that reading of Aaron Walls SEOBook that is changing my world view of Google or maybe it’s just because I’m ready for something refreshing in a search engine.

There was once a time when the big G was loved and everybody had something positive to say but these days it’s a big downward spiral in the number of Google supporters and i’m already on the slippery dip on my way off this ride. It kind of reminds me of how I felt about Microsoft many years ago. I really liked Microsoft and always told people how great they were but after using Windows for so long I got tired of the same old thing, the viruses, the same old applications and needed something fresh so I switched to Apple and right now I’m really enjoying it until that day that it comes time for a change again and owning a Mac just becomes unthinkable. That could be sometime away because right now I’m really loving it!

So what is it that makes us want to change? For me it’s about the lack of innovation and loyalty of a companies user base. It’s that we don’t need you attitude and you’ll do as your told rubbish! Would the G be as profitable as they are without us users? But this is nothing new, it’s a natural evolution of the things that need to happen and even though it’s hard to imagine Google falling from grace I think there will be a day when they won’t be so high and mighty any more.

Unfortunately right now there isn’t much alternative but in any case I’ve now switched to Yahoo for most of my searches. If we give Yahoo some love, maybe just maybe we can inspire them and give them enough motivation to do something remarkable. With every passing day the G light dims and the opportunity for someone to take their place gets even better. Will it be Wikia Search the open source search engine that does the G in? What do you think?

Only a few days left to win the book ‘iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business’ . All you need to do is subscribe to my feed and add a comment to the original competition post telling me why you think SpinDigg rocks.

You’ve got a fantastic chance to win the book because so far there is only one other guy in the running. I’ll be posting to the winner early next month absolutely free. Hurry time is running out!

How much do you value investing in yourself? Do you think you are worth more than free information? Are you worth more than information that is available to everyone? Of course you are!

We are becoming like soldiers not open to any marketing around us. We’ve seen it all, the guy in the street wanting to stop you for just a few seconds to talk, the girl from a bank offering you that new credit card of death, that infomercial on TV on building that ripped body, no wonder we can’t help but become skeptical that every bit of information provided to us must be some sort of scam, or some kind of gimmick! I can’t really blame anyone for feeling like that, after all we have all had bad experiences with people taking advantage of us expecting them to do the right thing and that sometimes can leave you feeling pretty dumb and embarrassed.

Remember how you felt that time that guy showed you a magic trick, gave you a compelling prophecy that was complete crap and left you with some cheap home made ring that was supposed to be a good luck charm for the future and $50 less in your wallet!!! Sounds silly doesn’t it but that’s exactly what happened to me and boy did I feel like a complete fool.

But you know what… it’s ok and yes I felt stupid but that doesn’t mean that every opportunity presented to you is full of crap! How many times have you seen in forums that someone is saying all ebooks are crap! Well I’ve purchased Aaron Walls SEOBook and I can tell you it’s worth more that the $79 dollars I paid for it. And what about those Flash lessons I bought from CartoonSmart, again they are awesome! In fact most things I’ve purchased to invest in improving my knowledge and skills have been well worth the money I paid for them and have even earned me money I couldn’t have made without that knowledge.

With the flood of products circulating around the internet, you need to know that alot of these products are really fantastic and you will learn a bunch from them. Since I started SpinDigg, I have spent more than I’ve made (which I couldn’t buy lunch with) in investing in information not freely open to everybody. So why not just stick with free information? Free information generally is scattered, incomplete and only a segment of the big picture. Great products that you pay for generally have a concise outcome for teaching you, provide all the information you need and have support to help you learn.

If you find an interesting product that fits what your interested in then do some research and see if the product has any reviews and if you can from authoritative sources. Maybe you don’t think it’s worth it but how many times have you spent $100 on a night out with no real long term gains and never thought twice about it? So go on, invest in yourself sometimes!

Are you prepared to invest in yourself? How do you feel about paying for information? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

The links I provided in this post are actual products I’ve purchased and are not affiliate links.

If you have ever followed the timing and updates of PageRank that we have all come to know and love, you’ll know that it has been as of writing this approx 177 days since the last toolbar PR update. The update was expected based on previous timings to be around July 21 but that hasn’t happened and we are all still waiting to see when the update will occur.

This well overdue delay has caused speculation that Google may in fact be dumping PageRank all together which kind of seems like a strange thought that that little green bar may be gone forever. I personally have got used to looking at the PR of sites to get a quick idea of how Google values the quality of the site.

How will the disappearance of the the PR rating affect how link trades are done on the web? The PR ranking has no doubt been a major factor in the buying, selling and trading of links since we all discovered that having higher PR links to your site was better for rankings than lower PR sites. Do you think this is the reason that Google wants to shake up the SEO world by dumping this indicator which has become the thorn in their side.

Initially I think if Google drops the PR indicator there will be a short shake up as web master everywhere start to work towards a new currency of measurement that will be replace the PR rating. The Alexa ranking seems to be a common indicator for assessing a web sites value but this has been know to be inaccurate particularly in the web master community.

There is still much rumor and speculation about whether this is true or not but even if it was I’d say goodbye PageRank! Next!

Today is a sad day for every Australian. Today John Ilhan aka Crazy John passed away from a heart attack at age 42. John was the founder of Crazy Johns the largest independent mobile phone retailer in Australia which he built up from a single store and became the 126th richest man in Australia with a net worth of over 300 million dollars.

Only yesterday he appeared on a current affairs program here in Australia talking about his life and rags to riches story. Although I only knew Crazy John from his advertising and constant media exposure, John was someone that anyone could look to and admire for his passion, commitment and determination to succeed and also his compassion.  John also founded the Food Allergy Foundation with a million dollar donation.

Goodbye John and thank you for the inspiration you have provided to the millions of people who knew you.

You may have noticed that Google has recently made some changes to the keyword tool in Adwords and one of the things that has gone AWL is the negative keyword tool. I really used to love that little bugger too as I found it very useful in quickly finding keywords that may be generating excessive impressions.

Fortunately there is no need to panic… not yet anyway I thought I’d shoot off an email to Google and see what was happening and what I could do now to find negative keywords quickly. According to Google the negative keyword tool is going to be rolled out again in a bigger better and shinier version which some adwords accounts would have seen during a trial of the keyword tool having a negative keywords tab.

I’m not really sure why the old negative keyword version had to go before the new rollout but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. Here is Google’s suggestion as an alternative whilst the new keyword tool is rolled out.

You may have noticed that your AdWords account’s Keyword Tool no longer has a ‘Negative Keywords’ tab. We
have intentionally removed this tab from all AdWords accounts. Please be assured that the Keyword Tool is otherwise unaffected.

In our commitment to bring you the latest innovations in online advertising, we often release features that are still under development. One of these features was the ‘Negative Keywords’ tab, which had appeared in a certain percentage of AdWords accounts. As often happens with new features, we are going to make a round of adjustments based on the performance data that we have collected. The tab will be unavailable during this time.

We’re eager to re-release the ‘Negative Keywords’ tab in the future. In the meantime, we recommend using the Search Query Performance report to identify any irrelevant search queries that have triggered your ads. Then, add these terms as negative keywords per the instructions at https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6635&hl=en_US.

Learn to run a Search Query Performance report at https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68034&hl=en_US.

If you have additional questions, please visit AdWords Support at https://adwords.google.com.au/support, where you’ll find the answers to many of our frequently asked questions.

We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.

I’ve tried the suggested method and I don’t really like it. It might be a short term fix but I find it time consuming and not as effective. You’ll have to hold your breath while the new negative tool is being rolled out which hopefully isn’t too long.

Here is what happens when you mix martial arts with modeling.

I feel really bad for the model who just gets up and walks away. She didn’t look like she was hurt but those sharp edges in the broken part of the stage could have quite easily gave her a nasty gash.

Ouch!

Don’t ask me how the hell this tool calculates the value of your blog because I have no idea and I really don’t care. All I know is it somehow has something to do with Technorati, and whether that matters or not is probably debatable. I just thought it would be fun to punch SpinDigg.com into the computer and see what happens. SpinDigg is now about three weeks old so I was really curious as to how much this blog calculator would say it is worth. So here is the verdict.

The SpinDigg blog according to this tool after three weeks is valued at $565.54. Not bad and better than what I expected!

Then I thought hmmm, what other blogs can I check to see how much they are worth. Well after seeing how Shoemoney and John Chow are competing for RSS subscribers, why not see how they fair against each other for blog value!

So in this showdown of true big league bloggers the results are…. drumroll please!

And the winner is John Chow by $616,477.

If you feel like wasting some time then check out the tool