The Reluctant Pornstar

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Elli Nude

Friday Feature Photo: The Sexy Canadian Red-Head, Elli from Ellinude.com

I recently came across an interesting blog, The Reluctant Pornstar. As you can imagine, I was immediately intrigued.  I wondered if it was a blog by a pornstar chronicling her journey through porn, or maybe someone who did erotic photography and was being stigmatized. Perhaps it was a feminist blog about the objectification of women?  What I immediately loved was that I did not know what to expect. What the blog does demonstrate is the power of a good title.

Branding is everything. You can make or break your business and career through it. What this brand made me do was dive into her site so I could learn more.

I discovered that Elli, the Reluctant Pornstar herself, is an adult star. Though, as she will be the first to tell you, she does not identify as one. She has a website that features photos, videos, and webcam of her engaging in sexual acts. Though they mirror a lot of the traditional amateur porn sites, Elli has set herself apart by her non-porn activity.  Besides blogging, she also posts photo essays about everyday life, gardening tips and cooking videos (well, there are also erotic stories).

I have spoken about the importance of being yourself in your branding. Your personality is your biggest asset, and Elli has created a great franchise based around hers.  She is sexy and flirty, a little geeky, witty and generally playful.

Elli NudeSome examples of her reluctant pornstar side, and some of my favorite parts of her website, are her playful videos, like “Flip and Squish Eggs” or “Morning Bum”. I think I like that one because it is so distinctly Canadian.

Elli’s blogs range from everyday life in Vancouver to sexy videos and some of her more salacious exploits. Regardless of the content, they are all distinctly her.

She became the Friday Feature because I wanted to give you an example of how being yourself can be integral to the creation of your personal branding. Elli is able to attract a wide audience because her branding is so unique. The blog allows her to capture both an Adult, and non-adult audience.  Why would you want to capture an audience not looking for Adult content?  Well, if someone likes your blog, and they know that you produce adult content, there is a chance that they will be curious about it. You are more likely to get a longer term subscriber if you capture them with more than just a sexy vid or provocative picture.  If they like YOU then you become the substance behind your product.

Make sure you check out Ellinude.com and follow Eli on Twitter @ElliGirl

From Hoarders to Whoreders

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Jaime Pressly

Jaime Pressly both funny and sexy

When it comes to movies, almost everyone loves a good parody, whether it be porn or mainstream.  The reason parodies are so great is because they trade on the cultural capital that already exists and then add a whole new level of humor. Sex parodies are even better, because now you are not only adding humor, you are adding sex.

The newest parody, Whoreders, has been released. It is a spoof of the show Hoarders on A&E. But where Hoarders is a depressing show about a serious mental illness, Whoreders is a funny movie about, well…hoarding whores.

As you can imagine, the Twitterverse is filling up with very funny tweets involving this play on words.  But what this really brings to our attention is this:

People love humor.

People love sex.

Ergo, people love funny sex!

This is a truism that can be taken to the bank!… as Whoreders is probably doing.

Lessons for social media

  • Stop trying to be so serious. Lighten up. People get tired of serious.
  • Be funny. Funny is sexy. More often than not people fail at sexy and succeed at being boring or drab.  Instead of trying to be sexy all the time, shake it up a bit and relax. Throw a joke or two into the mix.  Sometimes being  funny is sexier than just being sexy…look at Jaime Pressly
  • Capitalizing on the popularity of something else is a great way to grow your network and engagement. If something is popular, talk about it.  Talking about different topics also helps you seem more diverse.  Plenty of people only talk about sex or their next web show and it just gets dull. Don’t box yourself in. Be multidimensional. Your followers will pay more attention and in turn you will get more clicks.

Expose Yourself on Video!

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Sexy Adult YoutubeVideo is one of the best ways to use social media. Of course, this is not news for the Adult Industry, however some of the popular content might surprise you.

Though we all love a great porn clip, the reality is we can’t really share that with a lot of people. It is unlikely that I will post it on Facebook, in part because I could get my account deleted. I am not very likely to retweet it, unless I am in the Adult Industry. I am probably not going to email it to everyone I know.  The lesson is simple – content can be limiting.

No one knows what will go viral and what won’t.  Many times a video goes viral because a few influential people saw it and shared it.  But shy of being able to get Conan O’Brien to post your video on Twitter, it is hard to know what will be the next laughing quadruplets or sneezing panda. However, your video doesn’t have to go viral to get great exposure.

Going viral is an issue of popularity (and influence)

Oftentimes, getting a video to go viral is a matter of getting the right person to share it – someone who has both popularity and influence. Once an influential person gives the video social proof by sharing it, then the power of popularity takes over.

Keep in mind that just because a video gets a million views on YouTube, this does not mean that the originators of the video are making any money or getting people to go to their website. No one may know who they are.  They do have the potential to capitalize on the popularity of their video and use it to promote their agenda.  But one of the issues with viral videos is that the original host does not usually remain the only host. In fact, other people posting and sharing the video is the essential element of the viral process. So, even if you placed your website at the beginning or end of the video, if it goes viral it is possible that your info will get edited out.

Great exposure does not have to be viral

This is where influence becomes more important than popularity.  To get exposure for your content you need to make sure that your followers and fans will share it. The chain is simple; I share a video with my followers then they share the video with their friends.

It is called the x250 Rule:

I have 250 friends and they have 250 friends= 250 x 250 = 62,500 people

Though many of us have more than 250 friends or followers, not all of them will share your content. But every person you show your content to has the potential to show it to their friends (who might share it with their friends, and so on). Your video might not go viral in the usual sense, but you can still share it with tens of thousands people!

Make sure your content is sharable

Creating adult content that is universally sharable often means taking the “Adult” out of the content.  However, the content can be as simple as a video blog, filming behind the scenes of your movie shoot, taking some funny home video, etc.  Basically, content that shows your personality. Showing something out of the ordinary is a great way to make it personal and appealing.

Who you are can make you famous!

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Adult Star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

Feature Friday Photo: The sexy and delectable April Hunter

These days, with everyone who has an Internet connection going online and being content creators, it is getting harder and harder for adult stars to set themselves apart. Finding a niche is vital to separating yourself from the crowd. If there were a magic formula to this, everyone would do it. The trick is to look inside yourself and find that thing that sets you apart and then essentially exploit it.

Finding your thing is the key to success in everything. You have to find what you are good at and then run with it.  The hardest part is committing to it, and taking the time to build your skills and proficiency in your natural talent.

In certain ways the Internet makes it easy to make yourself seem unique and different. A nice website, some good photography and a good copy editor and you can create the illusion of an interesting persona. However, social media busts this personal mythos.

When you use social media, you are actually talking to people. So even if you try to maintain an inventive personality, at some point your real self comes out.  Finding a niche that separates you from the pack needs to come from you.

Many people think this means you need to have a special skill or talent. But this is not true; a niche can be anything from the talkative sweet girl-next-door type whose main skill is chatting you up on Twitter, to the dominatrix who will only talk to you if you say please.  It can truly be anything, but make sure that it is really you.

This week’s Friday Photo features April Hunter.  She has found a niche that is true to herself and is blowing it up!  I was originally going to write a post about the power of YouTube for non-viral video marketing. But now you will have to wait until Monday to read that post. April inspired me to write about the importance of being true to yourself and distinguishing yourself through your own personal niche.

Adult star and pro-wrestler April Hunter

April has created a dynamic career based on her interests. Starting off as a dancer, she realized this was not enough; it wasn’t bringing her the career satisfaction or potential advancement she wanted. So she got into fitness modeling, then became a pro-wrestler.  Now as an adult star, she is all of it and more!

On Twitter she is a great tweep to chat with. Her content is funny and engaging. She shares great pics from her life, and is also really easy to talk to. Her site really shows her passions and her specialty.

In short, April has done an exceptional job of turning her interest into her niche and that niche into a career.

Make sure you visit April’s website: www.aprilhunter.com and chat her up on Twitter @AprilHunter

The takeaway: To set yourself apart, you need to be yourself.

Facebook lets you evict your fans!

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Sexy fans

Are your fans enthusiastic or crazy spammers?

Facebook has added a great new feature for Fan Pages, the ability to unlike a page or person.  Are spammers plaguing your Fan Page? Do you have fans who post inappropriate content? Now you can do something about it besides just deleting the post.

In February, Facebook made some big changes. One of them was allowing Fan Pages the ability to like other Fan Pages.

Well, some pages started Liking pages and then posting inappropriate content on their wall. The page could remove the content, but they could not do anything about the page that Liked them. So they were being left open to more spam, plus they were also getting associated with these pages by being listed on their Likes. So, for example, if a hate group Liked your page, you would be listed on their page among the pages they Liked. With the Fan Page’s ability to set their featured page, you might even be a featured Like, displayed prominently on their sidebar.

Facebook now allows Fan Pages to remove a Like from their page. You can “unlike” them, even ban someone so they will not be able to post or otherwise interact with your page.

This new feature doesn’t just let you kick people off your page, it will also help you engage better. You can now sort your fans by people and pages, so you can see everyone who Liked your page. This gives you more opportunity to interact with other pages and deepen your Facebook relationships.

Keep in mind, if you are posting content on other people’s pages, you can now be removed. If you get banned by pages, you might also risk catching the attention of Facebook and getting deleted from Facebook for spam. So when you post on another Fan Page wall, make sure it is quality engagement and not spam.

The Pink is Cloudsurfing

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PV Locker LogoIn February, Pink Visual announced PV Locker, their cloud computing solution for storing porn. Though cloud storage is nothing new, cloud storage for adult content is.  Essentially, the locker is a place you can keep your porn so you don’t have to save it on your hard drive. The cloud storage also allows you to access your content from any place, and any device,  that can get internet access. Have a tablet, like an iPad? No problem.  Smart Phone? Easy peasy!

With the launch of the new PV Locker, Pink Visual did not just keep their PR releases to the standard blog, news sites and Twitter.  They began crowdsurfing.

From the beginning, the talk of the PV Locker was not just a “Here it is!” Pink Visual announced the site and then asked for feedback.  They tweeted out to their followers, asking them to look at the site and let them know what needed improvement. But it did not stop there.  Not only did they ask for feedback, they followed up. When I tweeted them about loving the site, they quickly contacted me to ask for my thoughts on improvement.

Pink Visual Tweet

This is a great use of social media for launching a site. Soliciting this kind of feedback makes me want to dig around in their site, to see if I can come up with something that might be helpful.  In the process I become more familiar with the site, and am more likely to start using it.

In the process of crowdsurfing, they have received some feedback that will help design and navigation, from increasing the size of thumbnails, to 404’s on links. They also addressed the issue of 500 mbs of storage, and said that they will be increasing that soon.

A bit about the site

When you go to the site you immediately see featured video and a series of clips. Click on price and an internal pop-up window opens up that lets you easily create an account and purchase the video. Once you buy it, it is automatically saved in your locker.  Then when you want to access your content, you login to your account and can watch to your heart’s content.

The site is easily navigable by niche, porn stars and most popular. The design is very clean and has some fun logos (like the little PV locker) integrated nicely into the pictures.

What is so significant about the PV Locker is that this represents the new direction for porn. Businesses are accessing cloud computing for file storage in increasing numbers. More people are starting to see the benefits. And as our world continues to blend mobile computing into our daily lives, cloud computing will become an integral part of that transition.  Yet again, porn is leading the technology curve. Pink Visual is on the forefront of adaptive technology.

Though now you can only store videos from Pink Visual, the site will not keep its content storage proprietary. They have plans to open up their cloud storage to other companies.

When Pink Visual says that they are designing a site for their users, they really mean it. Crowdsurfing is a great tactic to find out people’s opinions as well as potential issues that may have been overlooked. It is a great strategy to get their fans more invested in their launch, and convert them to users as well as supporters.

 

 

How Adult Compares in Social Marketing

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The old spice man

Old Spice was one of the most successful social media campaigns ever. It had sex, nudity and humor and was everywhere.

Social media integrates traditional marketing strategy with the social component.  It has become the powerhouse for marketing campaigns.

The Social Media Examiner recently released their Social Media Marketing Industry Report. The top findings show that social media is growing in its influence. Most marketers are increasing their social media efforts across the board. Though the report did not feature an adult section, most of the findings are reflected in the Adult Industry.

Here is a list of the top findings:

Marketers place high value on social media: A significant 90% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
Marketers want to know how to monitor and measure ROI and integrate those results into their strategy.
Social media marketing takes a lot of time: Most marketers are spending a minimum of 6 hours a week.
Video marketing is on the rise: 77% of marketers plan to increase YouTube and video integration into their social marketing plans.
Facebook and Blogging are the two social media platforms marketers want to learn more about.
The top benefits of social media marketing: Social media marketing is generating more business exposure (72%) and improved SEO (62%).
The top social media tools: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs are the top social media tools used by marketers, in that order.
Social media outsourcing is underutilized: Only 28% of businesses are outsourcing some portion of their social media marketing.

The adult industry is no stranger to the power of social media marketing.  Twitter is the playground for porn stars. It is an excellent way to grow networks, keep up with industry happenings and promote content.  But adult has not turned its back on any of the social media networks. Despite ongoing issues with Facebook, many stars continue to rock the Fan Page.

An interesting finding in the report was that video content is generally dominated by large companies.  The time commitment and tech requirements of video are often prohibitive to a lot of small businesses and solopreneurs. Video is one of the best forms of marketable content; it is far more likely to go viral and be shared across Internet platforms (ie. retweeted, posted in blogs, on Facebook, shared via email, etc.). Adult is actually ahead of the curve on the use of video in social marketing. This is not surprising since video is a cornerstone of the industry, but even un-produced content, like video blogs and behind the scenes shots from camera phones, are being actively used in marketing strategy.

Blogs have come in as the number one growth area for social marketing. 75% of marketers say they want to increase their blogging efforts.  Adult blogs are starting to emerge but finding good content has been a struggle.  Most adult sites do not know what to blog about, and the blogs end up focusing on product or site promotion. However, blogging is a great tool for driving traffic to your site. It will even allow adult sites to post content on Facebook, or other sites that frown upon adult content, as long as you keep your blog free of adult images and video.

The biggest inhibitor is the time factor.  When most people get into social media they worry about the time commitment.  Though there is a high percentage of people in Adult who invest their primary marketing efforts in social marketing and spend a lot of time with it, this concern is reflected in the Adult Industry. The Social Media Marketing Industry Report shows that marketers who invest more time into their social marketing found more success.  The great thing, though, was that even people who spent 6 hours a week still gained significant business results:

6 hours per week

  • 58% use social media for a minimum of 6 hours per week. 
  • 65% showed an improvement in their SEO
  • 78% showed an increase in their web traffic.
  • 81% said that social media helped increase their exposure

Less than a Year

  • 45% reported new partnerships
  • 52% had new sales lead generation

More than a Year

  • 73% reported improvement in their SEO

More than 3 years

  • 47% spent 16 hours or more per week on social media
  • 72% reported that social media helps close sales
  • 72% strongly agree that social media increases business exposure
  • 91% report increased traffic to websites

Facebook leads the pack, followed closely by Twitter. If this report were done specifically for Adult, I believe the result would have been reversed.  Twitter is still the social powerhouse.

Social media has become the most effective long-term marketing strategy. It drives traffic, creates business partnerships, facilitates alliances, increases exposure, generates sales leads and improves brand reputation.

I Tweet Naked

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As you know, I take part in a variety of social media platforms.  Primarily, I live on the big three: Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.  Besides doing my own marketing, I spend a lot of time on these sites looking at what other people are doing.  I like to point out, and often blog about, companies or people who are doing good jobs.  Every so often I come across a piece of communication that is SO far from good I have to share it as a “What NOT to do”.

Most of the time these come in the form of Spam or auto-DM’s. This one is a little different.

On LinkedIn you join groups to talk to people in your industry, grow your connections and perhaps even make some business deals.  It is a great resource, but not a particularly sexy place.  It is not a place to go see naked photos (though you will find some in certain groups), or a place to meet a date (though sometimes this does happen).  LinkedIn is primarily a place for business.

One of the greatest values are the connections.  If you share a group with someone, you know you have a conversation-starter and a reason to add them to your network of business connections.  Once you are networked with that person, you can send them a message (unless you have the paid version of LinkedIn, in which case you do not have to be in their network).

I belong to a lot of groups and many people network with me.  If we share a group, you have a 99% chance of me saying yes.

So recently I received a LinkedIn email message from a photographer that simply said:

“you might have better luck if you were more pleasing to the eyes or dressed sluttier.”

So first off – Holy Inappropriate, Batman! I mean really, in what world is this considered an acceptable communication for a business platform (or any platform)?

Secondly, what did this guy think he was going to accomplish? Was I immediately supposed to be in awe of his amazing insight and start sending him naked photos? Then hire him to help me to be a more attractive slut?

And third, I am not unpleasant to look at. And luck has nothing to do with it. As a business professional, consultant and strategist it is not my goal to appear in any way other than how / who I am, and my expertise is the engine of my success.

Even if some business professionals prefer to tweet in the nude (and if I do, how will you know?)!

So here’s the lesson: don’t insult your audience.  If you are emailing, make sure there is some relevant purpose and intent behind it. You never know who your message is going to. You might just be burning a bridge you will later need.

Adult Classifieds get a new venue!

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Friday Feature Photo: Kyle King

Friday Feature Photo: The sexy Hot House Exclusive star, Kyle King

The adult ad section on Craigslist caused a big scandal in the United States. Craigslist received a lot of flack for their adult ads.  The “Craigslist Killer” was reported to have trolled the personal ads to find his next victim.  Despite intense scrutiny and a very public lambasting, Craigslist was not particularly interested in removing this section. In fact, the law sided with Craigslist. According to first amendment lawyer Doug Mirell, “The Communications Decency Act says that essentially those who are simply providing a bulletin board by which others can post their content is not going to be liable for the content itself.” When people cried out about moral responsibility, or about the site being used to facilitate human trafficking, the site reminded people that Craigslist had actively helped authorities track down people engaging in human trafficking. In the end, their adult/erotic section was removed.

Many people asked, “Where are adult ads going to go, now that they are gone from Craigslist?”  Duttslist has answered that question.  It is a site that is set up like Craigslist, following the same style of user interface. They have made no secret of their adult ad section, in fact they feature it; in their “Hottest Ads” section, you will see the most popular of their adult ads.  They also offer more traditional community ads, making the classifieds site robust like Craigslist. but they are catering to the adult industry.

Duttslist is a two-person operation. Mike is the owner and Jen is the media consultant. Their most popular city is Toronto, but they are quickly spreading into major US cities.  Active on Twitter, various message boards and escort review boards, Duttslist is actively promoting their site as the new source for adult classifieds.

Their promotions are working because they are averaging over 200,000 page views a day, with more than 15,000 unique daily visitors, and it just keeps growing. They offer three different levels of ads, from the free classifieds to sponsored ads.  Though they are not competing with Craigslist, since Craigslist no longer offers an erotic services section, they are raising some eyebrows over there, because they did receive a cease and desist from them.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the adult industry was looking for a good adult classified site and Duttslist answered their call.  Make sure you check out their site and visit them on Twitter


Friday Feature Photo: Kyle KingThe amazingly sexy Kyle King is this weeks Friday Feature Photo. I met him at the Phoenix Forum this past weekend, and was immediately captivated. Obviously he is incredibly good looking with a body I could eat sushi off. But he is also a really nice guy.  I had a number of wonderful conversations with him.  Kyle is a Hot House exclusive, and has starred in a number of great Hot House movies. He also has a blog where he shares his thoughts and pictures from his travels, talks about his life and presents some exclusive sexy pics.

Make sure you check out Kyle’s Blog

Find him on Hot House

And chat with him on Twitter @KyleKingxxx