Recently a friend sent me a link to a new “computational knowledge engine” called Wolfram Alpha: http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html.

I followed the link to 15-minute presentation about www.wolframalpha.com. I won’t go into the details – if your interest is peaked you’ll check it out. However, I do want to say that I found the presentation interesting and have bookmarked the website.

My friend’s e-mail is a textbook example of viral marketing. Before he contacted me I’d never heard of the website. Media cost to Mr. Wolfram - zero.

Recently I took a PowerPoint presentation from a client, combined with a video from small camcorder and added some captions to make a video of a presentation that the client gave at a national conference which will go on their website and probably YouTube. The cost to them was just the editing of the components into a video.

There are any number of tools that can create affordable video presentations, but technology is not the real wisdom here. The secret, or wisdom, is to make a presentation that is either (pick one) newsworthy, entertaining, compelling or evocative of some emotion. Ideally your presentation should have elements of all three.

I’m not talking Academy Award screenwriting and/or acting. The Wolfram Alpha presentation was animated screen captures of the website – probably done in Flash – and Mr. Wolfram’s pleasant voice, but the ideas and examples were intriguing and to someone who regularly does online research – compelling.

The PowerPoint presentation was serviceable, but the video was very “guerilla” and probably would have sufficed only as a record of the event. However, by combining them and adding additional content we created a presentation that was provocative and compassionate.

Now get this. If you have a website you can’t rely on it to market you. There are a bazillion websites with several gazillion added each day. Websites are like books in the world’s biggest  library that will remain on some far distant shelf gathering dust until some patron either painstakingly searches them out on the library’s computer or happens upon them while patiently scanning the shelves.

Making sure that your website is chock full of a variety of copy on various topics related to your enterprise and offers a newsletter and/or blog will help you produce what are called “organic” results to searches. As most of you may know this is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. The companion term, Search Engine Marketing, or SEM, requires that you rent adwords. This is also known as “buying clicks,” and depending how much you’re willing to pay for the adwords,  or phrases, governs where you show up in the Sponsored Links at the top or on the right side of Google’s page.

By they way, lots of companies will offer services to get you placement on “all the search engines” not just Google. This allows them to charge more and give you less, because – for the being – Google is still the gorilla of Internet Search. That may well change when Bing catches on, but for now, if you’re buying adwords, stick with Google.

Whether you rely on SEO or SEM, whether your website shows up at the top of the page when someone is searching for information and services in you line of endeavor, the problem is that someone has to look for you. As with the books on the library shelf, your website doesn’t show up on someone’s doorstep asking for attention. Or, if it does, that’s generally called SPAM.

However, if I get a video from a friend or acquaintance most often I will look at it. And the referral constitutes a form of endorsement. Media cost to the maker of the video – ZERO.

You all can and should make a video explaining what you do, why you do, and how your efforts will benefit a customer. If anyone out there says this isn’t appropriate to what you do – you’re wrong and I’ll gladly demonstrate why if you want to follow up with me – steve@rustadmarketing.com.

Is online video any different that a TV commercial? In some ways, no, but in other vastly more important ways…absolutely. Online video, or commercials if you insist, are not limited to time because the Internet doesn’t charge for broadcasting. In other words, unlike print advertising, radio, outdoor, TV, or direct mail, there is no charge for distribution…no matter the length in time, or column inches, nor the number of repeat viewings or printing necessary to effectively deliver your message.

Let’s let that sink in a minute.

With video on the Internet, you have all the time you need at no cost to you save for production expenses to explain your proposition. Because you’re not limited to 30- or 60-seconds you can rattle on to your heart’s content about all the intricacies or your passion, persuasion or profession…as long as you make it (repeat after me) newsworthy, entertaining, compelling and/or evocative of some emotion…ideally all three.

The most profound bit of Marketing Wisdom for website owners and operators is that content – in quantity as well as quality – is king. Unlike other forms of marketing messages such as ads, brochures, outdoor boards, fliers, etc., the flexibility and inherent economy of websites creates the opportunity of providing more than just a concise presentation of features, benefits and a call to action.

However, unlike traditional advertising, which is pushed at the potential customer through whatever media the viewer, reader, or listener is accessing at the moment, the Internet is passive. Every website waits for its visitors. This is why the key to mastering the Internet is the knowledge that the quality and quantity of your website’s content strongly influences how quickly and how often your website is “searched,” that is to say, reached by visitors.

No other mass communication medium can effectively archive and access as much content as does the Internet. Bits and bytes take up little dimensional space. One of the amazing features of computing is the exponential growth of data storage. With every couple of years, more and more information is being stored in less and less space.

The challenge faced by anyone searching for some fact, price or informational nugget is, of course, plucking what you’re looking for from the virtually infinite haystack of data. Search engines like Google have made billions on facilitating your search, but finding what you’re looking for online can still be a daunting task. The Internet is akin to an old-fashioned library whose shelves groan under the weight of tons of printed material old and new. The big difference of course is that – unlike a library – the Internet has no theoretical limits. It can retain everything that was ever posted on-line.

Another big difference between the Internet and library full of books is that Google’s searching technology is word-based. Google’s programs constantly scour the Internet cataloguing and ranking websites by their content. This means that designing and populating your website with content that is relevant to your product or service causes your website to be recognized by Google’s “bots” which make it more readily available through their ranking process.

This is why I say “content is king,” and why your investment in quantity and the quality of that content will determine whether and how often people will return to your website.

Contrary to other advertising media, which are variously priced according to size, length or duration of message and therefore require the advertiser on a budget to present a quick and concise message, websites are cheap. They can go into exhaustive detail, offer multiple examples and even digressions with but one caveat. The website’s content must hold the readers attention, which means that online content must be well-written. The Internet is, after all, still a writer’s medium. Eventually video will change that, of course, but for now the Internet is more read than watched.

Of course, as with any attempt to gain attention, there are some short-cuts. For example, being lurid or pornographic is a sure attention-getter…at least in some quarters. If you want those eyeballs, you’re wasting your time reading here. As far as I’m concerned proffering smut to the souls who want it is akin to serving cotton candy to diabetics. It’s not something I can live with.

The one surefire technique for building a following is to tell a good story. Be it gossip, news, knowledge, or wisdom – human beings are hungry for information, and the more entertaining that information is – the better. Despite all the content that bombards us today, if you want the world to beat a path to your (Internet) doorstep, that is to say, your website, tell good stories make them interesting, entertaining, and do so often.

Wise business people shop around for marketing services before they buy. If you think such Marketing Wisdom is part of our DNA and therefore is so basic that it doesn’t deserve mentioning, you’re mistaken. I can relate countless first-hand stories of frustrated and disappointed businesses that have approached me, hat in hand, after fruitlessly squandering their marketing funds with a college friend, relative, acquaintance from Rotary or a member of their tip club.

“Can you help us?” They ask. Our previous firm… (fill in any sad story you like) …and now we have little money left and the deadline is nearly here.” If they’re really honest, they might add something along the lines of, “Of course we should have hired a professional like you in the first place, but we thought we could help out our (friend, relative, acquaintance from Rotary, or fellow tip club member) and get a deal in the process.”

Now that they have no choice but hire a professional, they often feel that said professional can whip up a serviceable solution with a wave of a mouse. Unfortunately, there is no Santa Claus, Virginia. The longer I work in this field the more I understand that competent, effective marketing requires time and resources. Fortunately for the hat-in-hand business, I’ve been in marketing long enough that I can always create something that suffices within the remaining time.

Sadly, such last-minute solutions are never anything near what I could have accomplished had I the time and the money available when the client first began the effort. Perhaps you’re thinking that these circumstances are really an opportunity in disguise, and that the business person who I’ve saved from disaster finally understands that one gets what one pays for and becomes a loyal client of mine.

As if… Generally, the business folk whose bacon I’ve just yanked from the fire are so embarrassed to have such a naïve blunder exposed that they never return. As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

The wisdom here is that smart businesses who want good marketing do their homework, create a short list of comparable firms that meet their marketing needs and budget and – if they’re really smart – make their choice after paying each candidate to do a small, sample project.

Of course, lots of businesses will compile a list of candidate firms and review resumes and portfolios. Then way too many of them will next request that each candidate submit a speculative (“spec”) solution to the proposed assignment. “After all,” one such firm told me. “You don’t buy the cow without sampling the milk.”

Such is the ambient level of business savvy. The problem with this kind of…ignorance…is that marketing doesn’t come from a cow.

The marketing firms that are so hungry or so foolish that they will agree do spec work for these “tire kickers” rarely do their best work for spec and – frankly – they’d be even more foolish to do so. A good business relationship is based on mutual respect, and few business people will respect you for betting your business on their whim, or agreeing to be treated like a cow.

If you want good marketing help, do shop around, but shop smartly and with respect for your potential marketing partner.