A few years ago it was the German media proclaimed that blogs had no future simply because they would give away too much information about the users and that they could not be kept private.

I have found my blog to be a most valuable platform – and so do my over 5000 subscribers.

Yesterday I was shocked to see that they haven’t learned and that the witch-hunt seems to continue: only with a different “witch”.

Now German media outlets, especially the Westdeutscher-Rundfunk (Government-related tv station), has repeatedly aired programs which totally falsify information in context to social networks.

Therein they stated that the information which people upload and enter on to social networks are indexed by search engines instead of the truth that they are only searchable if I the user decide that they should be.

A long line of arguments followed, totally torn out of context, but the primary indicators that this piece of “information” was not really true was that Facebook had 2 million members.

While this may be true for Germans registered on Facebook it was not mentioned by the network that they have a few million more.

If this trend of negative propaganda should continue I think a lot of German companies will endanger their competitiveness on the global markets as they have done with not embracing blogs. Most German companies could be doing better in terms of search engine score and public relations work if they were to utilize these and other great instruments out there.

Let’s see what the next trend in 2010 will be and what stories German media outlets will come up with to demonize those.

Ok, this is my favorite chapter of the book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) simply because if there is one industry out there on the web which really has to compete it’s the porn industry.

This implies that they really know their stuff when it comes to branding, search engine optimization (another topic appearing in a few weeks), search engine marketing, etc.

So here we go:

It’s sad but it’s true: if there is one industry on the planet that is fighting for market-share more than any other, it’s the porn industry.

Naturally they are the ones you want to look at when it comes to doing good search engine campaigns, link building, link popularity etc.

Yet the issue we will be focusing on is another impressive and innovative thing they have done to get the attention of the customers they want to sell their non-free products to.

If you do a bit of research on a specific sexual practice, kink, fetish, or whatever you will find out that a lot of the highest-ranking search results are forums or other internet communities containing user contributed content.

User contributed content attracts a lot of search engine traffic because 10000+ users registered on a website with a discussion forum, personals, pictures, etc. can generate a lot more content a day than you will ever be able to. And the best part is that this content is highly diversified and free.

The reason these pages rank so high is because they appear to be informative communities, which have nothing to do with any company trying to distribute products over the web. For non-observant people this is true.

But if you pay attention to the advertisements placed on this website, you will soon find out that most of the links, banners, and what not link to one specific provider of sexually explicit content over and over again.

Ok, let’s get away from the nasty section and move to the good side of life again and what you can learn from this practice.

No, please do not go ahead, cash out a life insurance and create a porn portal. You’re lacking the experience, trust me.

Furthermore, let’s not forget the fact that advertising postage stamps on a website for shoe fetish will hardly have the effect you’re going to be expecting.

So let’s stick with the example that you are a retailer for specific, rare, regionally limited postal stamps. We now go back to draining that life insurance of yours and creating a portal for philatelists where they can discuss insights, share information, maybe even find interesting people over the web in other parts of the world.

Since you’re a philatelist and not only a philanthropist, we will have to create an ROI somewhere along the line to make this whole thing worthwhile.

This we achieve by using any available free space to place links, banners, and other advertisements to your online presentation which will not only lead 100% relevant traffic to your shop.

Also, your relevance in Google’s view will significantly go up because the portal we have created is linked throughout the web on several other portals, websites, and blogs through articles your community users have generated for you (free) and other users have posted elsewhere (free). See the win-win-win-situation here?

Since you have links there to the online shop where you sell your stamps, you will gain visibility too and may end up higher in search results.

The fact that you advertise on this platform will in the near future lead to the fact that other people from related businesses will try to buy advertising space on this website which will again increase the demand of this platform and increase the return of investment of this venture even more.

Just a side note here, but an important one: since you officially have nothing to do with this portal you could not care less what the people do on this portal.

Interested? Keep in mind that in my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) I point out that it’s inevitable that you have to combine all efforts pointed out therein to really make your appearence on the web count.

If you have questions please feel free to discuss them here or ask them directly be contacting me.

Remember how last week I told you about website analytics? And the week before that about diversifying operational risk through web campaigns?

While we go through the chapters of my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) please keep in mind that you will not be able to achieve web leadership if you don’t combine all instruments I mention herein.

Every single one is important, yes. But only the combination of all of them alike will bring you the success your competitors are having.

Let’s move on to todays chapter, which is called “Taking your business from local to global for a few thousand bucks”:

Fifteen years ago it was mandatory to set up physical shop if you wanted to expand your business to another country; heck, even if you wanted to do business in another city or state.

You as a business owner are blessed with this situation in the current technological era.

And I say this in reference to the fact that you have the internet as a global and most cost-efficient market place, giving you access to 1.2 billion potential customers worldwide.

You further have the friendly logistic professionals in their purple/orange, brown, or yellow cars and planes who will bring your goods to any given destination on earth – if need be within 24 hours, sometimes even less than that. And that’s not all.

So what’s involved when taking your business international?

As I pointed out earlier you really have to sit down and do your homework.

For instance: different countries have different laws and legal issues, which can easily break your neck. Yes, I mean break your neck.

So figuring out whether you are allowed to export/ship your goods to the country you’re targeting is really helpful to know.

Another, probably the primary factor, is that you have to attract business in this country. Since you have decided to set up shop without a physical shop, we have to raise awareness of your products otherwise.

This can be most easily done through direct or indirect search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns.

While a direct SEO campaign will involve the translation of your complete website and the services and widgets it may include, an indirect SEO campaign will try to attract new customers or prospects to your services via so called link bait.

Let’s take an example: your website is available in the languages English and Spanish and you target the US domestic market with its 300 million citizens, a majority of those being potential customers to your business.

Beside that you are already reaching out to a significant part of the world’s population because those two are the most spoken languages.

Naturally though, hardly anyone from a country with a dominant language, for instance France, will submit their searches to Google in English or Spanish but in French, even though they speak English and/or Spanish fluently.

So what you do is an analysis of this countries habit in reference to entering search terms.

After having ascertained the results from this study, you will most likely want to go ahead and create bits and pieces of bait on the internet.

In our example these will be terms searched for by the world’s French speaking population.

So when someone submits a search query to Google in French, they will wind up not directly on your website, but on a website you have put bait on and which has a link – let’s call it the hook – back to your website.

This way, you’ll be able to attract this specific person to your website, products, or services in your native language without having to go through the hassle of translating your online presentation entirely, but can just profit from an indirect SEO campaign.

By taking this approach and only translating to the most dominant languages (as the buying power of these countries inhabitants will be higher), you’ll reach Europe’s 500+ million citizens and pretty much the rest of the world.

If you want to find out how you can make this plan happen for your organization please don’t hesitate to buy my book “Adding the ‘E’ to your Business Strategy” ( Ebook | Paper Version | Amazon Kindle ) where you will find out how you can analytize the current situation and make the right decisions.

Next week we’re going to move on my favorite chapter, “learning marketing from the porn industry”. That one is so exciting because the sleazy people really know their stuff when it comes to web marketing. So stay tuned people and make sure to tell your friends about me!