It has been an interesting experience being an online marketing pioneer for the last 28 years. I have met all kinds of people, and been presented with all kinds of interesting opportunities.
It has been an honor and a privilege to be involved with all of these people and businesses all over the world; however, to also have all of those 10,000,000 people and friends of people that I have met along the way as an audience that I can reach every time that I am inspired to do so, is a miracle.
So what do you do when you realize that you know celebrities, gold-miners, financiers, and international venture capitalists? The players:
LinkedIn.com - formerly an HR mach-maker site, LinkedIn.com is one of the oldest and largest sites on the web, preceding the wild success of Facebook and Google, with over 400,000,000 active members. Lately LinkedIn has implemented a series of changes, beginning with open groups, and recently moved forward by encouraging internal blogging. The Consultants groups on LinkedIn, originally one group of 20,000 when I joined, has been split into specialties and regions of the world, literally millions of subscribing members, with many millions of strategic connections all over the world. That is just one group of up-to fifty you are aloud to join, and those are on LinkedIn alone...
Google, Google+, YouTube, Google Maps and other Google channels: By gaining influence, subscribers and reach elsewhere, and doing a good job of optimizing for Google, this audience can also be yours.
YouTube has over a billion users — almost one-third of all people on the Internet — and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views.
YouTube overall, and even YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-34 and 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
The number of users coming to YouTube who start at the YouTube homepage, similar to the way they might turn on their TV, is up more than 3x y/y.