Everyday my spam box is assaulted by a cornucopia of self proclaimed Internet marketing gurus, SEO wizards and social media masters. They all claim to have discovered some new “secret” system that is going to launch your Internet business into the stratosphere!

Their claims usually go something like this “if you purchase my new super website optimizer whirligig thingamajiger extreme program and invest only a few short hours a month I will make you a mega gajillionare! “This is always followed by testimonials of supposedly real people who have used said superduper grifter system and now are super rich themselves never having to work again a day in their lives.

So here it comes folks, this is a part where I break out my shiny new gold encrusted needle so I can burst your get rich quick bubble. The fact is designing building and marketing your Internet property is HARD it is a firkin lot of work! I would even go so far as to say it is more time and effort than a lot of traditional brick and mortar businesses.

If you don’t believe me take a look at this mind map of what it takes to build a web based business. It’s a little condensed and hard to read because the original is actually about 6 foot tall when printed out there is THAT much stuff to do.

So now that I have probably made the vast majority of you completely despondent. There is an upside, with a lot of hard work on the front end you can build a business that provides residual income and pretty much runs itself with minimal oversight.

So if you are willing to take on a bit of a learning curve and do a lot of hard work, then being an Internet entrepreneur may just be for you. My suggestion is to learn the basics first, learn how to be proficient with on page optimization. Learn proper ethical and effective link building techniques.Write compelling articles and stories, don’t just slap down keyword stuffed outsourced to India crap ass articles. Think of your Internet business just like you would a regular brick-and-mortar business.

There are tools that later on can help with your online business. But these usually are for making an already busy online business more effective and efficient. So don’t waste your money listening to all the so-called guru’s out there they are banking on your belief that you can have an easy way out of doing the required hard work, and to be perfectly honest between you and me back in the day I probably purchased every single whirligig Internet marketing shortcut making software program or system out there. So I can say with much embarrassment but from experience. If I would have just worked the fundamentals and done the work in the beginning I would have made it to the place I am now probably in about half the time.

So my promise to you is, I will never become an get rich quick Internet marketing guru. In fact from this day forward I declare myself on Internet marketing urug! I am now the anti-guru, instead of selling you some impossible bill of goods about not having to work to make your Internet business a success. I am going to attempt to tell you how it really is, which for the most part includes a lot of blood sweat and tears. You’re going to make mistakes and probably lose some money but that’s part of the process and eventually as your level of skill and  knowledge increase so will your income.

So stop following those guru’s out there, if their systems were so great why aren’t they just hiding out in some dark corner using their fancy dancy get rich quick thingamajiger to generate virtual cash registers for themselves? Why do they need you to buy their product if it is such a money machine? I promise you it is not because they are kindhearted souls who want to spread their income generating love throughout the world.

I believe I have stood ranting on my soapbox quite long enough now. It’s time to get back to work being an urug, you should too!

Hey if you liked this post or even if you didn’t like it,  feel free to add your comments below and join in on the conversation.

Please retweet: Just copy and paste line below in twitter

RT @robburnsbrain I Declare My Self The Worlds First Internet Marketing uruG! ( Rob Burns Brain Blog ) http://bit.ly/cn1RxC

I recently had the opportunity to be interviewed by Raoul Martinez on Fox five news. Even though the producers kept changing the subject topic and I wasn’t quite sure what we are actually going to talk about the morning of the show .(Pretty common for most news segments) Raoul was a pretty funny guy and a bit of a tech head so it was a really easy interview. It was funny while waiting to go on, I was tweeting about being on the news and I instantly got a reply from Raoul sitting across from me in the newsroom before we even met, talk about a small world! Make sure you follow Raoul at @RaoulFOX5 he tweets about some interesting topics. Let me know what you think about the segment and add your comments below.

The other day while checking some search results, I noticed something interesting, a new bit of information was popping up on the bottom of the my findings.

social search results "professional organizer"

So what is this new tidbit of data gifted to us by the almighty Google, and what does it mean for us search marketing folks?  Well this is Google social search my friends, and it means we will have to stretch even further away from traditional SEO methodology into something that is more akin to social SEO. In my humble opinion Google social search could be a welcome addition to our overall search marketing bag of tricks.

For some time now  we have been reading about how Google is planning to integrate more social media into the regular search results. First we saw twitter results at the top of our searches and now Google is integrating the folks you are connected to via social media with their keyword search results, further blurring the lines between organic SEO and social media.

Back in the olden days before the term social media was even coined, and twitter was some kind of an eye condition. Googles main priority was making the connection between relevant sites and how they related between like minded communities on the net. The more relevant the connection the more important Google thought the site was and thusly aid site would show up higher on the search results.  Not so entirely different than what we are calling social search today.

So with that bit of ancient history in mind it is easy to see how social media would eventually become an ever increasing part of the search mix.

Google Social Search 101

I am going to call the communities we are connected to via social media our “social footprint” the more folks we are linked to the larger our social footprint will be. With social search, Google is measuring and including our social connections as an ever increasing relevance factor in our overall search results.

One way Google determines your social footprint is in your public Google profile. There are two kinds of connections.

The first is a direct connection These are all connections from friends you follow on your social media profiles like twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Gmail chat connections and any social media connections added to your Google profile. These connections may be added to your Google profile or Google might just find them on its own.

Next are secondary connections. These are people your direct connections follow. You can see your connections by visiting Google social dashboard, The social dashboard takes information from your public profile and any other data it has collected from your public social media content and provides you with Googles view of your social footprint.

Now once your social circle has been determined Google will add this information to its regular search mix and viola you will have results related to your individual social circle connected to the phrase you are searching for showing up at the bottom of Googles organic search results!

To have social search show up you have to be signed in to Google. Since Google has about a billion products folks could be signed into like Gmail, Google Reader, Picasa and so on, so there is a good chance your target market is signed on and will be able to see you in their social results.

Here is a Video from Google explaining social search, featuring Googles Matt Cutts sporting a nifty new chrome dome look.

Okay so now that we know little bit more about what Google social search is, how do we integrate it into our regular Internet marketing and SEO practices? Here are a few tips that will help get you started on the road to an integrated system. Since this whole social search thing is so new I’m sure the rules are going to change and new features will be implemented so use these tips as a starting point.

The first thing I would recommend is to sign up for a Google profile

Next I would go through all the Google products and sign up for any and all products that either have a social media profile or an RSS feed. Now add these to your Google profile.

After you add all the Google related products to your profile go to Ping.fm they have a list of around 60 of the most popular social media sites that you can join up from Ping.fm . There is a lot of great SEO and Internet marketing value from using Ping.fm but that is a different subject for a later time. So as you’re going through the list and signing up for the social media sites also add them to your Google profile. I would also recommend filling out as much of the profile information as you can since this will help indicate to Google you are a real participant and not just goofing around.

Photo sharing seems to be a big deal on Google social search, so I would highly recommend adding as many photo sites to your Google profile.

Make sure you optimize your social media post and photos for your target keywords. And of course just like in regular SEO and marketing do it naturally don’t just start trying to game the system and inflating your post with spammy keywords. If you do it will probably get you kicked out of most social media platforms and I’m guessing eventually Google will throw a penalty your way just like they would for organic search.

Last and most importantly, increase your social footprint. Remember Google not only looks at and shows results for people you are connected to but also the people they are connected to. So the larger your social footprint to more people will view your social results. That said make sure the people you follow  are not part of the new wave of social media spammers, as I believe eventually not only how many people you follow but who you follow will be an important factor. This of course is just speculation but  appears would have to be the natural evolution of social search, if it  is to succeed  and not just  become another useless medium overrun  and ruled by spammers.

So to wrap things up in my humble opinion I think this new social search will be a good thing. I think for serious marketers it will be a new tool in our growing  marketing toolbox and help separate the wheat from the chaff in the Internet marketing  realm. Mostly I  hope it will limit a the tidal wave of fat freaking unemployed middle-aged men that are declaring themselves “social media gurus”. As if social media  was an ends to itself  and a solution to all the worlds problems instead of being a tool in a well-rounded Internet marketers   repertoire. Okay rant over I feel a little better now.

I hope this article was informative and helpful. I would love to hear your thoughts and reactions so please feel free to add your comments below. Last but not least you can follow my Google profile here

I just finished a segment on “The power of social media” with my new amigo’s over at Fox 5 news San Diego. It was a blast , during the broadcast I promised to post some social media examples viewers could check out. So here are a few examples of folks doing social media right. I will keep adding more examples as I find them,  If you  find any social media standouts  that you think  might be interesting and educational  let me know and I will add them to the list.

Social Media Examples

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/zappos
Uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

http://twitter.com/don_draper

AMC’s Mad Men: Twitter account of Don Draper a character on hit TV series Mad Men

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/AbsolutTopBartender
Top Bartender series: Facebook fan page promoting Absolut Vodka’s reality TV series Top Bartender. Looks kind of like Top Chef only with booze.

http://www.facebook.com/fox5sandiego
Fox 5  Facebook fan page: Spread the love become a Fan!

YouTube:

Will it blend: Creative blending has almost 100,000 subscribers and over 2.2 million views, helps sell B2B products to a consumer base.

Vincent Ferrari tries to “cancel his account”: You can feel his pain as Vincent Ferrari attemps in vain to cancel his AOL account.

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