Renaming this series, if you can get it done in 5 minutes or less it’s a quickie.
Ever seen those links at the top of sites like:?

Home > Products > Hardware > Hammers

or

The Apple Store uses it...

or

it's good enough for Billionaire Richard Branson...

Then you’ve seen what is called Breadcrumb Navigation (wiki).  It’s good for users, good for SEO and good for you and quick to get on your site. So why don’t you have it?

Bread Crumb navigation (sometimes wrongly called cooke crumb)  greatly reduces confusion in deeply nested pages or categories, both for end-users and search engine bots, and if you’ve got WordPress and Thesis it can be yours in less than 5 minutes. (you can probably do it without Thesis in the same time, you just have to be geekier)

How To add bread crumbs navigation in 10 steps.

1. make sure you have Wordpress and Thesis 1.5 or higher installed.
2. make sure you have the plugins Thesis OpenHook and Breadcrumb-navxt installed.
3. create a few pages, in the right side of each page, choose from the attributes panel what parent page you want, this will form the heirarchy for the trail.
4. In the Wordpress Admin section open  Appearance Panel>Thesis OpenHook.
5. Take a look at this visual guide to which slot you want to place the bread crumb. I recommend the After Title hook, find the matching slot in ThesisOpenHook’s dropdown.
6. Paste the code in the installation section here
   

   Using OpenHook to place Breadcrumb-navxt into the Thesis After Title hook

7. Checkmark “Execute Php on this Hook”
8. Click the blue “Little Ass Save Button” below it.
9. Preview the site, you should see it below the Title.
10. Think about ways to clean up the hierarchy or style it better with CSS+graphics (which is how we got the breadcrumb above).

UPDATE The excellent developer of that breadcrumb plugin sent me to these pages, which cover how to do it (with graphics).  I turns out that the original of this style of graphics was Apple.com

http://mtekk.weblogs.us/archives/guides/quick-and-easy-apple-com-style-breadcrumb-trail-for-wordpress/

http://www.jankoatwarpspeed.com/post/2008/08/14/Create-applecom-like-breadcrumb-using-simple-CSS.aspx

There are several tweaks that have to happen to get the rich graphics and CSS to work with Thesis, which is what shows up above.   Once we figure out some compatibility issues with Thesis 1.6, I’ll look into making it available.

Quality Answers and Utilities at no to low cost, to make your life easier..so you can focus on what counts making content and making sales.

Listen I know you’ve got questions on video on the web,  I know a lot and I want to answer them -I’ve already started as you can see in the previous few posts.

I’m doing this because I’m pissed off.  I’ve been astounded by how much bullshit there is when it comes to getting your videos on your website, and how complicated many make it.  And I want you to succeed and for that to happen, you can’t afford to spend weeks or months getting your sites up…as has happened to several of my friends and masterminders.

I know there is a lot of pieces ( video, video players, video conversion, video hosting, etc), but it doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive as others might have you believe.

I really want to get you guys focused on what matters…getting your content up on the web and making conversions rather than spending time on video nuts and bolts.

So here’s the deal.  Post a comment and ask any question on web video and I’ll answer it for you free.  My goal is to create a solid set of tutorials on this site to not only answer your question but also get those outsourcers you use up to speed.  At my consulting business I  routinely charge clients $200/hr for these type answers!

In addition I have a whole dev team who loves nothing more to build solutions to make your life easier, and help me in my own business which is much like yours.

So what do you really want to know about web video?

Put a splash image before your video

In the prior post we showed you how to get video onto S3 and onto your webpage using free tools in under 5 minutes.  That was so fast, we didn’t cover a great feature that gets more clicks on your video.

With and without splash image, which would you rather click on?

To show an image before your video loads (aka a splash image)  is great to get more clicks by helping users know what the video is about, the result is more people will click to watch the video and that is the point of putting them up on the web in the first place!  The alternative is a rather unattractive black box.

Of the various free media players, there is several that support splash images. Note this is built into a few different media players, but the following code only works with  FlowPlayer (an open source and free player), which we covered in the first episode.

FlowPlayer makes adding images in front easy..it actually supports whole playlists in it’s configuration!, basically a splash image will be just a playlist of 2 items,  the splash image and then your video.  The first will autoplay, the second will not, so it will pause on the image.  FlowControl has a nice fade effect to add polish.

If you’re using wordpress formatting it with the Visual Editor, can make it slightly finicky, your best bet is to copy the code below (stripped of whitespace) update it with the values you need and paste it instead where the 2nd “<script” block begins.  If you’re doing a normal webpage this step is optional.

<script language=”JavaScript”>flowplayer(“player”, “YOUR_PATH_TO_FLOWPLAYER_SWF”, {playlist:[{url:"YOUR_IMAGE_URL", scaling:"orig",autoPlay: true},{url:"YOUR_VIDEO_URL",autoPlay:false}]});</script

To Get an splash image here are a few options.

1. Use any image you have lying around…I like ones of dead relatives, they always get attention.
2. Create a title slide using PowerPoint, or a simple text editor and
3. Open up your video in a media player and capture a frame from it using a screen capture utility (built in to most Operating System with the “prt sc” button.
4. Create it from scratch to be all fancy pants.

TIPS

It’s a good idea to get your splash image like your video on the CDN,to keep it from clogging up your webserver.

To be safe, once up on the CDN, test the url to the image in the browser directly (to make sure the ACL is setup) then try it in the playlist.

If it doesn’t work in wordpress, create a simple text file and paste the flowplayer embed code into it ,save that text file as *.html, and test that in a browser till that’s working.  Then strip out any unnecessary whitespace to put it into the wordpress blog.

Save that working code into a place you won’t forget, odds are you’ll use it over and over again…especially if your successful.

Coming soon, what CDN’s are, the pros and cons of S3 as a video provider, higher end alteratives. Be sure to subscribe to hear about those and future episodes.

You want video on your site, and are confused by all the options, jargon, technical issues and shady expensive stuff.    I feel your pain, I get a LOT of questions about video from my clients with the same questions and confusion…especially when they are getting charged for things that are free.   So I created this short video to clear things up.

Video can be easy, 5-10 minutes is all it takes, and in this video I’ll show you how to take a video on your desktop and get it onto your S3/Cloudfront and then into your website or blog in under 5 minutes.

Here’s what you need to get started

• A website or blog (duh!)
• A video you want to get up…(make it good else noone will watch it)
• To be signed up with Amazon S3 and CloudFront (the latter is especially important for video..both free signup)
• A tool for uploading to S3 (e.g. S3Fox, CloudBerry (windows only))
• About 10 minutes

Note: this video was uploaded in the exact same way as shown in the video. One thing we didn’t cover in this is how to get that pretty image at the very beginning, that’s covered in part 2.

NOTE: if this is your first video, and you play the video from a media player somewhere else, you’ll need to upload a crossdomain.xml file, you’ll only have to do that one time per ‘bucket’ (where you can have more than one bucket per your amazon account, for different companies). The one I use is here (but becareful, this is “wide open” access).

There’s lots more to know about doing high quality video that streams nicely and cheaply.  Be sure to opt-in on the right to get notified on new episodes.

Oh and Mr. Pine says hi.

In 5 minutes how to video blog with Amazon S3

In this post we’ll show you how to get your first video off your camera onto your wordpress blog, amazon s3 or cloudfront in less than5 minutes, with free tools.

I’ve been using Amazon Services for quite some time, and haven’t ever needed services like EzS3 as most features can be done pretty easily for free.  The video players also are typically available for free and pretty easy to configure.

1. Get a wordpress compatible blog (comes with most providers) free.
2. Get the pb-embedFlash wordpress plugin which allows you to quickly embed any flash or flash video with a single line, in a standards compliant way.
3. Sign up for Amazon s3 with Amazon Web Services (free signup, reasonable costs for hosting)
   

   Click to signup for Amazon S3

4. Use S3Fox that can be installed into FireFox (free) to upload the files to your bucket. S3Fox is like a FTP for your webserver that works with S3 instead.

5. 

   IMPORTANT Click the Everyone has Read access, else they won't be able to see the video

   Once uploaded, set the permissions to these as public so that they can be visible to the open net, by default Amazon makes them only available to you.

6. Decide on S3 or CloudFront for delivery of the file. I recommend CloudFront for more consistent access across the world.
7. 

   Copy the URL and Paste it into your embed code.

   Right click to Copy the url.

8. Paste that url into the embed code of your wordpress post (see the top video for an explanation)
9. Preview and that’s it!

You may also be interested in this post, comparision of Amazon vs Ooyala etc.

NOTE: if this is your first video, and you play the video from a media player somewhere else, you’ll need to upload a crossdomain.xml file, you’ll only have to do that one time per ‘bucket’ (where you can have more than one bucket per your amazon account, for different companies). The one I use is here (but becareful, this is “wide open” access).

Be sure to opt-in to the right to gain access to more great tips.

The video that we used in the example, starring Mr. Pine.  Enjoy!

Part 2 of 5 Key elements with enhancements from the great interview between Eben Pagan and Frank Kern up on Kern’s blog

(also extended with additional insights from and Eben’s pre launch video)

“solid products begin with a solid framework, and most info products don’t cover how to create these”

(I totally agree with Eben here!)

Frameworks are valuable structures to hang concepts onto, which sort them out.  This has the triple benefits of:

1. Making it clearer and much easier to understand
2. Appear more valuable to end users, allowing it to be charged for more money.
3. Be usable immediately.

Here are 2 frameworks to avoid and one to follow:

REALLY BAD Product Creation Framework -VERY Common:

1. Create whatever you feel like.
2. Spend months in OCD fashion perfecting every detail.
   
3. Put it in a box on the street corner with a price tag and expect millions.
   

RESULT: Your product and dreams end up getting taken out with the trash.  You laugh, I know people who have garages full of products they can’t sell.   Please, avoid this common and preventable failure!

BAD Product Creation Framework – Sadly also extremely common:

1. Get all the questions your customers have.
   
2. Answer them.
   
3. Transcribe them. Make that into an ebook product.
4. Put that product somewhere near where the customers are.
   

RESULT: Your product gets marginal success, lots of confusion, and mild or no profit. Next month, a competitor does a better job and your sales drop to nothing.  This is what most people do and most fail.  Be that cunning competitor instead, it’s not that hard.

GOOD Product Creation Framework (rare!):

1. Get all the questions your customers desperately have.
   
2. Answer them in a way that all people can truly understand.
   
3. Hit them with multiple modalities (video, text, etc).
   
4. Reach them in every way you can (email, web, etc).

RESULT: A product that customers will find really valuable and really understand, you can charge big bucks for it.  Emulate this, please, your wallet will thank you.

To get more on the 1 part of the framework to create these types of products see part 3 of the notes.

Part 3 of 5 of from the great interview between Eben Pagan and Frank Kern up on Kern’s blog

Your probably missing  70-80% of your potential sales.

4 Learning Styles is the most powerful of the 10 frameworks taught in Eben’s latest course on info product development, and his most powerful communication technique that can be used in any medium: live or email. Using it can help you dramatically communicate with 100% of your audience, rather than being poorly understood.

The 4 Learning Styles originates from David Kolb (often misheard as David Cole) a Harvard Psychologist, who in studying the way people learn, discovered 4 distinct learning styles, that tended not to overlap.

The four learning styles are:

1. Why
2. What
   
3. How
4. What If

They need to be presented in that order, else you will lose people.

Think of them almost like different color blindness. One person is color blind in red, the other in blue, the other color blind in green.  So to reach them all we need to broadcast in all the colors.

The order is VERY important, and can be used anywhere, copy, teleseminars, content, you name it.

Most people You may not realize it but the way you learn is also usually the only way you teach which means you’ll only be reaching the learning styles you use.   This means you’ll only reach 20-30% percent of your audience. Wasting 70% to 80% of your market (and your money).

Also notice that this overlaps with the classic marketing AIDA formula:  Attraction, Interest, Decision, Call to Action, which is great for doing PPC ads, which gives you 4 lines exactly.

Connect with 100% of your audience, just follow these steps:

For this example we’ll say we’re making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for a lunch

1. Ask Why: First ask yourself why they should pay attention to you, right now.  What are the emotional motive drivers of the information?  Write these down first.

• And what terrible pains will they avoid? (E.g. starving horribly while all the other people eat, spending all the money on outrageously priced , or running out of time to each waiting for your meal to arrive)
• What benefit they will get? (E.g. You’ll be happier, have an easier life, happier family,be more attractive, and save time +money, with this portable, tasty, filling, and inexpensive power combo).

2. Ask What for: What is it?  What purpose is following you for?What is  the vital essense, the history, the key concepts and the underlying theory.  How this is better, faster, cheaper than alternatives. These people need to see the whole the process.  Write these down second.

• In a single sentence, what is it that they are going to learn?
• Where did it come from?  (peanut butter was invented in 950 B.C.!)
• What are the key concepts?  (Fat + sugar give immediate and lasting energy)
• Is there an underlying rule or theory, that helps unify all the information? (p+b sandwiches could end all wars)

3. Ask How: The how people— they need action steps, specific procedure.  They want to get inside, how it produces results. They’ll put up with the previous two, as long as they get this. Write these down third.

• What will the goal look like when it’s finished? (Picture of person eating the sandwich)
• What are the prerequisites to start? (E.g. must go to the store and get peanut butter, jelly and bread, and something to spread it with)
• What is the first thing they must do, be specific (open the jars).
• What is the next thing they must do?  (Spread peanut butter on both sides)
• …repeat   (do the same thing with jelly)
• What is the last step, how will they know it’s finished?
• What are the possible trouble spots and solutions? (Natural peanut butter must be stirred first; peanut butter on both sides of the bread will keep it from getting soggy with the jam)

4. Ask What If:  What if I use this product to… These people are action oriented— they don’t really need to know why, or how, just the to “Just do it!“  Write these last.

• How could they use this in other than the obvious way (what if you filled a whole bag of sliced bread, you’d have lunches for the kids for a week, what if you experimented with different types of jellys and nut butters)

• What are the immediate results they will get? (tasty filling quick easy and cheap! What if you did it started right now)
• What if you did this everyday for 30, 60, 90 days, a year, a decade? how would you benefit?

Call to Action, What to do right now.

• What’s the immediate specific action the user needs to do RIGHT NOW?
• Write it: “Go do this one thing right now”.    (go to the store and get the peanut butter right now!)

Eben notes he uses these everywhere: his seminars, info products, and with his 80+ employees, constantly cycles through these patterns all the time, to keep the entire audience’s attention.  He has found dramatic increase in his team’s comprehension and appreciation of what’s being done.   He challenges people to steal those 4 steps (Why, What, How and What If) even title that in their own emails, and sales campaign. I’m trying it right now, it seems to be helping organize the writing faster. Neat.

Another great article on this is from master Alex Mandossian, if you enjoyed this, go read this on how he uses this framework to make super successful teleseminars..upto 12K of them,  it’s a quick read

Note: the real information on David Kolbe’s work can be found at his website “Learning From Experience” and is also called “experiential learning theory” or ELT.  It is much more academically focused and worded the four basic groups are named very differently (but more accurately).  In reality I believe we all embody all 4 aspects at differnet times.

There is a good short 5 min video from Mike Koenig covering more of the Kolbe, it interesting varies signficantly from what Eben covered in a way that can’t quite be matched up. Watch that great 5 min video here.

• The Sales personality: persuaders and motivators, ask “Why?”,  35% of the population
• The Scholastics: objectives and outcomes, “What For?” 18% of the population
• The Technicals: operations and processes, “How?”  25% of the population
• The Advocates and Marketers: creatives and marketer, focusing on opportunities “What If?”, 20% of the population.

You can find more by doing a search on “Kolb Learning Style Inventory” which returns some great pages like this great one,

Mike (and possibly Eben) originally heard it from Alex Mondossian

For part 2 of the interview go here for part 4 of the interview go here

For more tips on how to use these sorts of frameworks to make better products and other cool tips, opt-in in the above right.