Humans are fickle when it comes to how they respond to authority figures, even if they aren’t really authority figures and just appear to be one.

A classic example of this is the “White Lab Coat Experiment” (Milgram, 1963) where the limits of how far people will go to hurt one another when presented with a perceived authority figure is calling the shots.

If you are familiar with this experiment, the results were simply shocking.

People were compelled to give an electric shock to another individual. Even to the point of (perceived) death, simply because someone wearing a white lab coat told them to.

Now I’m not suggesting that you do anything extreme like this at all, however you have to recognize the power of appearance as a credible authority.

Luckily, Google is rolling out changes to their search results that give you an opportunity to “put on the white lab coat” and be that authority in your niche.

Changes & Google Author

Like it or not, your Google results are changing.

There are plenty of discussions going on about if this is a good things or a bad thing, but either way it doesn’t matter because it is happening.

What you can do as a smart publisher and author though is move quickly to take advantage of the changes in the most positive way possible.

Right now one of the most beneficial ways to do that is be being a verified Google author, otherwise known as “rel=author”.

What Google Author (rel=Author) requires

The official Google documentation is pretty confusing for the average person seeking out how to do this because a lot of the documents reference a Google profile which has been supplanted by their social network, Google+.

So, with that in mind, here are they points you’ll need to know before putting on your gloves and going to work.

1. You must link to your blog from your Google+ profile (illustrated below)
2. The website you contribute to must have a link to your Google+ profile on each article you write
3. When creating the link back to your profile it must be formatted with rel=author & and with a + sign
4. Application to be verified author and stay informed about changes by filling out this form.

Pro-tip: Use a close headshot on your profile for maximum results.

Example of “Contributor To”

If you have more than one site that you contribute to, then add those sites and repeat all of these steps on each site.

Example of rel=author

The correct way to link back to your Google profile (which is now pointing to your website) is by using a specific link, with specific text.

Google states that you must include “?rel=author” at the end of your profile URL, and that the text ends with a “+” symbol.

An example of this with my profile (which you must replace with your own profile URL) would be as follows:

Connect with me on
<a href="https://plus.google.com/113688277963234521306?rel=author">Google+</a>

Which as a finished product will simply look like “Connect with me on Google+”

Setting up Author Bio’s

The best way (in my opinion) of setting up that special Google+ profile backlink to all of your articles is with an author bio that appears at the bottom of all your posts.

Eample Bio

Note: It seems like the most popular installations of WordPress do this differently so I wanted to walk you through each of the steps on the most popular installs.

Implementing on a regular WordPress theme

Most premium themes have a place to add your bio to each post, but if for some reasons yours doesn’t there is a free plugin that will take care of that for you.

It’s called WP Biographia and it should make it a snap to do.

Implementing on Thesis

I personally use Thesis here on The College Startup, and it has suited me well. It was one of the first frameworks to really crack open the market in a big way, and I’m sure Chris Pearson is going to surprise us all when Thesis 2 hits the market.

While there are plenty of features out of the box that are awesome, you’ll need to add some code unless you are using the new awesome skin from Kolakube called Marketers Delight 2 (which is what’s running on this blog).

You are going to want to start by adding this to your custom_functions.php

function thesis_author_box() {
if (is_single()) {
 ?>
 <div class="author_info">
 <h4>About the Author</h4>
 <span class="author_photo"><?php echo get_avatar(get_the_author_id(),96); ?></span>
 <p><?php the_author_description(); ?></p>
 </div>
 <?php
  }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_after_post','thesis_author_box');

Next, add the following CSS code to your custom.css file

.custom .author_info{ padding:5px; margin:0 auto; }
.custom .author_photo{
  float:left;
  margin-right: 10px;
  margin-top:6px;
  background-color:#E8E8E8;
  border:1px solid #DDDDDD;
  padding:10px 10px 5px 10px;
}

Implementing on Genesis

Probably the easiest of the bunch, just head to your profile section where you fill out the author bio anyway and you should find a checkbox to enable the author bio on posts.

Checking your work & waiting

Once you’ve added the appropriate links to your Google+ profile and added the author box with the rel=author snippet there is only one thing left to do.

Fill out the official form with Google (which you can find here.) so they know you’ve done what you need to do and you stay up to date on any changes.

You’ll need to give Google a bit of time to re-crawl your site and process the request. However, once that is done you can check to see if it’s correctly setup by checking with this rich snippet tool as shown below.

As you might have noticed, not every single field is shown as “correct”, however the important parts are. Just make sure that your picture shows up and you should be all good to go.

In terms of your picture actually showing up though, nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunately Google uses an algorithm to decide when your picture will be shown and when it will not be shown which from my testing appears to vary between search results and articles.

Hope you enjoyed this lengthy post on how to build credibility by executing on the advantages of Google Author. If you did, please share this post with others by tweeting the following:

I’m using Google Author to add credibility to my posts in search, and you can too. [Tweet This]

Gizmodo had a nice tidbit today on how to view the brand new interface that Google is hoping to roll out. The method is shockingly simple, and the results are actually pretty neat.

1. Go to Google.com.
2. Once it loads, enter this code into your web browser’s URL address field (as one whole string):

{Broken into 3 parts due to blog width}

Part 1

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=

Part 2

4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-

Part 3

53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

There shouldn’t be any http://google.com in front of that. Just that code.

3. Hit enter.
4. Reload the page or open a new tab with Google.com and you will have access to the new user interface.

Gizmodo

Just as when you are identifying your clientele, you must break down your advertising efforts into fragments to boost the success within each segment. Those who plan on advertising anywhere and everywhere are most assuredly doomed to losses, because while advertising can drive sales and is necessary to garner attention for your product or service; a poorly implemented advertising strategy is going to cost you more than you could make back. That is the unfortunate truth for most early marketers.

So how do you decide which advertising strategies will work best for your brand? The decision is highly dependent on the type of product that you sell, or if you provide a service. One of the basic rules that you will learn in any promotional management class is that you do not stretch your promotional budget to meet your objective, you make your objective fit your budget. So with an emphasis on startups, here is the generalized breakdown for promotional strategies.

Affiliate

The biggest draw for startups towards an affiliate model is that it requires little to no upfront cost to start moving products, or gathering clients. The most involved part of this model is setting up the program and adding to the catalog.

Affiliate systems work by have a vendor or service provider sharing either a set dollar amount, or percentage of their sale (also pay per lead is considered affiliate). This usually works out for the vendor because it hedges the amount of money they need to spend in order to gain additional sales and grow their customer base. Affiliate marketers also like these kinds of programs because they are typically very in tune with what type of traffic they can channel and at what cost. For the marketer, these programs are essentially arbitrage.

{A great way to start your own affiliate program for free is through Has Offers [link] }

Pay Per Click {PPC}

PPC advertising is a great way to get traffic as quickly as possible, especially if you are using a major search engine to deliver the ad inventory. The idea behind PPC is that you create ad copy, select keywords to bid on, and pay each time somebody clicks on the link to go to your website etc. Click fraud is a known problem that many ad networks are combating daily, however if you know how to leverage the metrics that decide your cost per click, PPC can be a great way to drive sales.

{Google AdWords is certainly the market leader right now, and has the highest search volume thanks to Google}

Cost Per Thousand Impressions {CPM}

Impression based advertising is more for the major brands, or for particularly large promotions where a firm wants to raise awareness of their product or service (typically a particular line within a series). This type of advertising usually yields lower returns on investment for direct sales; however this type of advertisement can be attention grabbing if you have a great designer. The goal here is to really reach the magical 3 real impressions per user so the message sticks with them.

{Yahoo! has a very dynamic impression based network, at least until Bing replaces Yahoo! search[link] }

Cost Per Day: Take Over

Arguably one of the most effective forms of advertisements, cost per day also carries the highest ticket price. From a consumer perspective, these ads typically “take over” an entire website, or an entire category (often home page) in order to saturate the advertising impression with the customer. I feel that this is better for the consumer because while you can’t escape the message at hand, the ads are often thought out to much more detail, more creative and reduce overall clutter on the affected website.

The advertisers like these take overs because they know that each and every person visiting that page will see their promotional message and often times has the value added ability to make large portions of the site clickable for the consumer to find out more information. A great example of this is illustrated above from dictionary.com using its backsplash as a type of digital billboard.

MG Siegler from TechCrunch finds this approach appalling stating that is “God-awful” and “greedy”. What he is missing is that these condensed take overs result in a cleaner advertising experience for the consumer and a higher quality experience for both parties. {article}

The bigger the firm, the more diversified your promotional strategy can be, but while you are still small you should be focusing on narrow casted promotion with affiliate and ppc promotion. It isn’t until your firm requires large scale brand recognition (read outside of your local area) that cpm and take over’s are a logical step within your promotion.

What do you think about large scale take over advertisements from both perspectives? Is MG Siegler from TechCrunch.com correct in describing these digital billboards cancer to the internet?

Definition {Arbitrage}: Profiting off of the imbalance within two markets.

Example {Arbitrage}: It costs me an average of $15 to produce a buying customer to site X using my e-mail lists. Site X value’s each paying customer at more than $20, and therefore pays out an affiliate commission of $20 per new lead. The arbitrage in this case would a market imbalance of $5.