I'm Just Sharing

5 Dangers Of Working From Home

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 14, 2011

I don’t think of it in these terms all that often, but overall I work from home for the most part. Every once in awhile I go on the road for a few days to a few months, but in general I do most of my work from home. What brought me to thinking about it was that I made a list of Work From Home blogs, #21 in fact, and since it’s always nice to be recognized I thought I’d point it out and thank it for giving me an idea of something new to write about.

I’ve often encouraged people who are out of work to at least look into the possibility of working for themselves while they’re collecting unemployment. There are many people with great skills that could translate into a profession where they wouldn’t have to deal with weak managers or poor working conditions.

However, there are realities to working for oneself as well. I would recommend that every person who’s even thinking about working for themselves start by reading Before You Quit Your Job by Robert Kiyosaki. Although I probably wouldn’t have changed a thing, I’d have learned some things to watch out for ahead of time.

If you’re not in the mood to read the book just yet you’re in luck, because I’m going to talk about it for a brief bit. In essence, I have 5 things to tell you about working for yourself that you have to watch out for, or that you need to get more information about before you embark on your quest. Here you go:

1. You need to learn more about marketing. I have to say that marketing is the thing I’m the worst at, even after almost 10 years; gasp! I can tell you what doesn’t work, but I can’t tell you what does work. The issue becomes what can one do to captivate their particular audience. For me, the main audience I’d love to reach right now doesn’t do social media, doesn’t do “out of the box” thinking, and doesn’t really do minorities telling them what to do; that’s just being honest. However, my long term career goal works well for each of these, which makes me work on finding a balance between the two.

2. Money will almost always be up and down. I’ve had years that have put me in one of the highest tax brackets that barely kept me middle class. Then I’ve had years like 2009 where, because of the economy, I was scratching every week just to have enough money to pay bills and eat every once in awhile. It takes a lot of discretion not to spend unwisely when it’s coming in like water and a lot of planning to make sure you have enough to spread around and last awhile when things slow down.

3. Wasting time can be easy to do. Man, I feel like I waste time every day. I do, but when I look at it overall I also work more hours than a person working a 9-5 job does. Unless I’m working a project that someone else is paying me for I tend to work in spurts. That means that oftentimes business and pleasure get mixed together. For instance, when I’m checking email, there’s always more business email than personal email these days, yet I tend to do both around the same time. Also, something I learned as a manager is that you have to have “thinking time” because that’s how you come up with ideas for things such as writing or creating stuff. That could be seen as wasting time by some, but I find it crucial, and I find that not enough people take those moments out of their schedule for it.

My Work Space

4. You can overwork yourself. How many of you remember my 10-hours a day experiment? Hopefully things will change some as it starts to get warmer, but I normally sleep 4 to 5 hours a day, get a couple of 30 minute naps in here and there, and most of the rest of the time I sit at the computer working and thinking and wasting time. I joined the gym to try to get myself out of the house and into shape, but that’s often only an hour, if that. So that pans out to 14 – 16 hours or so at the computer on a regular basis; no wonder my mind feels shot here and there. I need to take more time off, although I know time off means I don’t get paid, but one’s mind just can’t stay sharp working that many hours. However, most of the people I know that work from home do the same thing.

5. You spend a lot of time alone. Why do I write my blogs so much? Because other than when my wife comes home I don’t have many other interactions with people during the day, unless I’m going to a meeting, networking, or I’m out of town. Some people think we just sit around drinking whatever in our pajamas or underwear all day and how nice it is, but there’s something to be said for engaging other people every day, even if it’s only for minutes at a time. If I decide to work out I’m still sitting in Barnes & Noble or Wegmans or the library by myself, even if there are other people around. It’s not always easy mentally, but it’s something you’d have to be ready to get used to.

Did any of that scare you? If not, you might be ready to explore doing this type of thing for yourself. You won’t have to deal with weak or mean managers anymore, but you just might find that your worst and meanest critic is actually you. But if you can get paid well, it eases things dramatically.

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Even Top Bloggers Think It’s Mainly About Content

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 30, 2011

I was recently reading a post on a blog called Social Media Examiner called 17 Ways To Grow Your Blog From Top Bloggers. In essence the writer, named Cindy King (it’s one of those sites with multiple writers), asked 17 bloggers of some worth (the site had a contest to determine the top 10 social media blogs) their thoughts on growing their blog.

by Stepan Radibog

Setting up my own criteria in gauging their responses, I came up with 4 categories of responses. Yeah, they’re kind of sketchy, but that’s why we all get to create our own categories of stuff. Anyway, here they are:

As you can see, out of 17 respondents 12 of them, about 71%, believe that one’s content is what determines how much a blog has the opportunity to grow. I find it interesting, not only because I fully agree with that, but because it seems that none of the 17 mentioned marketing, which some bloggers have been writing about recently in saying that it’s more important than content. The one person who wrote about community, Mitch Joel of Twist Image, wrote that he believed it was in building the community, which I also agree a lot with, but overall it does all start with content.

It seems that I only have 6 posts using the tag “content”, but I’ve talked about blog content in around 390 posts. I have always believed that content is king and it drives everything else one might think about doing. With the best marketing in the world, if you get people to your blog and your content stinks you’re one and done and your credibility is gone. If you write things that get the attention of enough people that like to come back on a consistent basis, then everything else falls into place and, oddly enough, they’ll end up doing some of your marketing for you in ways you can’t imagine.

Of course, a few of those commenting about content wrote that thing you know I hate in general, talking about high quality content without defining what it is. At least one person totally got it right, a lady named Gini Dietrich, who writes a blog called Spin Sucks (hate the name but like some of the content) when she said:

“if people begin commenting to one another and you can be graceful about differing opinions, your subscriptions will increase because people will be coming to your blog for their daily brain food.”

Let’s face it; 71% is a pretty nice number if you need one to encourage you to think more about your content than anything else. At least think of it first, then go about the rest of your business.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell

Better Blogging, Part Deux

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 17, 2011

I hope you checked out the first part of this mega-pillar post yesterday. If not, you can see the first half of Better Blogging here. It was a monster, but this one is even larger as I drive my points home.

It’s time to talk about actually writing blog posts. Every blog post is going to need a title, but there’s nothing saying you have to have a title first. Some blogging experts will tell you that you should create a title for maximum SEO (search engine optimization) benefits. Whereas I’m sure that can help, sometimes creating a title that will entice readers to come by works just as well. Would you rather read a post that has a title like “How To Regularly Acknowledge Your Direct Reports” or a title like “5 Ways To Make Employees Happy?” Also, try not to make your titles too long; it makes it harder for people who might want to give you acknowledgment for anarticle you’ve written on their blogs if you have a title that’s so long it’s unwieldy.

Next, let’s talk about actually writing posts. Do you remember writing stories back when you were in grade school? The teachers always talked about the concept of a story having a beginning, middle, and an end. Blog posting is kind of like that, even if you can bend the rules a little bit. It never hurts to establish near the beginning of the post what the post is going to be about, especially if it’s an educational post. If you’re telling a story, the beginning doesn’t necessarily have to flow as well, but it does need to have something to capture people’s attention so that they will stick around to read the rest of it. The ending of a blog post is important as well, mainly to help indicate to people that it’s officially over. I have read a lot of blog posts where you get to the end and you’re thinking there should be more to it. Leaving people hanging will irritate them and make them not want to come back. I’m going to come back to talk about the “middle” in a few minutes.

The length of blog posts is something that a lot of people like to talk about. From my perspective, in general a blog post is as long as or as short as it needs to be. That of course leaves a lot of leeway and doesn’t really answer the question as to whether it’s better to write long or short blog posts. The truth of the matter is that there’s no real answer for that because some readers don’t mind reading long blog posts, and actually prefer them because they know they’re going to get all the answers they want and need, whereas some others only want to be given the first two or three paragraphs as the entire blog post and then move on with their lives. We have made it through the MTV generation after all, where many people learned how to get everything they wanted in three or four minute chunks and didn’t have to concentrate on anything any longer. But that doesn’t mean you have to succumb to anyone else’s view of how long or how short you want your post to be.

Having said that, it’s more important looking at how short a blog post is than how long one is. Studies have shown that if the majority of your blog posts aren’t at least 250 words long you’re probably not going to get much benefit out of them. With Google’s new algorithms looking at content that actually offers something of value, it’s hard to justify in their minds that most people can gain value out of consistently short blog posts. This doesn’t mean that every once in a while you can’t get away with writing a short post; after all, if you’re trying to get the word out about some disaster that’s happening now, and you only have a short period of time or only know so much about it, you can’t always be expected to come up with 250 words at a clip. If you don’t care whether Google or any other search engine will help your post or blog to gain traction, then write what you want to. However, if you’re really looking to spread your influence and want the help of the search engines, you’ve got to work on helping to give them what they’re looking for.

Now we come back to talking about the “middle” and thoughts of when to ramble and when to get to the point. Let’s do this in concepts of educating somebody versus customer service.

If you’re trying to teach someone how to do something, it doesn’t always help to go off on tangents of things that have nothing to do with what you’re trying to teach. For instance, in my college astronomy class, the teacher was always talking about fishing and things like casting, rods, and all other sorts of stuff that I had actually no idea what any of it meant. He was of the impression that he could connect fishing information with astronomy to teach us how to do calculations. It didn’t work for me, and even though I knew a lot about astronomy, having read a lot about it through my childhood years, it became a difficult course to pass because of how confused this man made me.

Now let’s relate this to customer service. On occasion I’ve had to call my ISP (internet service provider) to ask questions about my service. What invariably happens is that I get someone on the phone who hears a portion of what I have to say and then immediately cuts me off and starts trying to solve what they think is my issue. The problem is that I’m often more technically savvy than the first person I talk to, and thus they’re trying to solve a problem that’s not my issue, that I know isn’t my issue, and that I know won’t be solved by any of the advice they’re starting to give me because they haven’t taken the time to fully listen to what I have to say.

Sometimes life and blogging are just like that; you need to have some filler, which some people might consider as rambling, in order to get the nuances of what you have to say better understood. This works especially well when you’re telling a story of some kind. If you leave a lot of detail out, the accuracy of your story will be lacking. People either have questions, or leave without understanding what the heck you’re talking about. Trying to get to the point without making sure everyone understands what it is you’re talking about just to try to keep a blog post short will surely kill your blog because people like knowing everything they need to know to get where you’re coming from.

So when not to ramble? If you make a point about something, there’s no need to make that point 3 or 4 times in the same post. That type of thing gets on people’s nerves. Also, making extraneous points that don’t help to clarify anything or add to the enjoyment of the story can be left out. If you happen to be talking about someone and you’re giving a description that they have blue curly hair that flows into a mullet that merges in with a Chicago Blackhawks sweatshirt they’re wearing, that’s a funny image. But if you’re talking about someone you happen to think is overweight and then go on a rant about overweight people in general before getting back to the rest to your story, that was probably not needed and you might have turned off a lot of people. Circumspection is always your best friend when trying to decide whether you’ve rambled too much or whether you’ve told enough to give the story or whatever it is you’re writing about enough substance.

So now you’ve written your blog article and you’ve posted it for all to see. Before you did that, did you think about whether you wanted to receive comments or not? The overwhelming majority of bloggers want to have comments on their blog posts. Blogging is part of social media after all, and being able to interact with others who respond to the things we write about is what makes blogging so special.

But there are people who either don’t want comments or want to restrict comments. Seth Godin is a perfect example of someone who doesn’t allow comments on his blog. He’s a big name person who’s written a lot of books, and not allowing comments has not stopped a lot of people from reading his blog or sharing his thoughts with other people. But not everyone can get away with that. Some people will write blog posts and every once in a while and then write one that they don’t want anyone commenting on. Many times it’s either a very personal post or rant that someone just has to get out, but would rather not deal with the controversy that allowing comments could create. Some people write blog posts and have a very short period of time that they leave comments open before they shut them down. I’m not going to say that any of these are good or bad; what I am going to say is that you as the blog writer has to make a choice of which direction you want to go and what you’re hoping to accomplish.

If you’re going to allow comments on your blog, I’m always of the opinion that it’s best to make it easy for people to comment. I’m someone who doesn’t moderate comments, set up exclusive blogging comment systems, or make people jump through hoops in order to leave a comment. The reason I don’t do that is because there have been a number of studies which have shown that a majority of people don’t like always having to sign up for the right to offer their opinion on something; I’m one of those people. For instance, if you’ve ever visited newspaper sites that allow comments, you’ll notice eventually that you’re seeing the same names over and over. It makes sense for a newspaper site to screen people because their expectation should be higher to protect both their readers and their advertisers. It doesn’t happen enough in my opinion, but for those that are doing it I applaud them for that effort.

For the rest of us, it doesn’t engender enough good feeling from those people who visit our blogs to put up roadblocks to the act of commenting. There have been a number of studies that have shown that having a system like Disqus or Intense Debate might raise the quality of comments that show up on a blog, but between 50% and 60% of people won’t sign up for those services and will either just read the content without ever wanting to comment or stop visiting those blogs altogether because of the frustration of not being able to comment however they want to.

The case for moderating comments is entirely different. People have different reasons for wanting to moderate comments, which can go from wanting to make sure certain information doesn’t show up on a blog post or making sure that no comment gets through that potentially has people saying something that the owner of the blog wishes not to allow. My gripe about visiting blogs that moderate comments is that you often find that later on at some point, when you’re least expecting it, you suddenly getting a whole lot of messages all at once both from people who comment on the blog and the blog owner’s response to those people. If that blog happens to be popular it can be overwhelming. It also gives the appearance of not trusting people who want to comment on your blog. Now, if you put your reasons up as to why you moderate comments, many people will accept that but at least they get to then make the decision as to whether they want to participate or not. I hate when I don’t know someone has a moderation policy and I do leave a post, only to realize that I have no idea when, or if, it will ever show. And I’ve had a lot of comments that have never shown up on someone’s blog.

Of course the big thing most of us worry about is spam. We all hate spam, but there’s nothing we can do to stop it totally. However, with most blog platforms there are these things that are known as plugins that can help slow it down drastically. They’re easy to set up and easy to use for both the blog owner and those who wish to make comments, and if you’re setting up different blog commenting ways to reduce spam, such as moderating or coming up with things like Captcha or math problems, it’s a better way to go.

We’re coming into the home stretch, and if you’ve lasted this long I thank you for it. These are some final thoughts towards the concept of better blogging.

I’m often asked where I get inspiration for ideas to write my blog posts. My goodness, every day of life is an inspiration to write a blog post, and for non-niche blogs it’s even easier. But since I do try to stay on certain topics more than other topics, I find that doing a lot of reading of other blogs really helps my mind figure out what I want to write on. For instance, if I happen to be reading someone’s post and they’re talking about 10 ways to do something, I could not only decide to write a commentary post on that article, it also gives me an opportunity to link back to that article. That way the original writer gets a boost from my article, and I have a new article as well. I honestly get ideas from my real life on a consistent basis, but I can get ideas by turning on the TV, following a thread on Twitter, or almost anywhere else. My problem is that I come up with so many ideas that I sometimes forget what they are when it’s time to write something. Lucky for me, I can always come up with something else fairly quickly to write on. Inspiration is everywhere; you only have to be alert and open to it.

As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there’s also the concept of “sharing the love”. People love knowing that you enjoyed their article enough to link to it, even if you disagree with their point of view. It never hurts to link to anybody, and that type of thing often encourages people to link to you as well. Something that works well with commenting, especially if you have a WordPress blog, is called CommentLuv. What that does is allows people to have a link back to their blog if they comment on yours showing the very last blog post they’ve written, and if they’ve registered with the site they get to choose from the last 10 blog posts they’ve written. I know that has gotten me a lot of visitors, and I also know that it’s provided me with enough blogs to be able to check out, see if I like them, and comment on.

Earlier I also talked about selling ad space on a blog, but that brings up your making the decision on whether you want to have advertising, marketing, or sell space on your blog or not. Google does have some rules for how you sell or market certain things on your blog (pertaining more to how you share certain types of links) to continue being listed on their search engine, but whether you care or not about that is irrelevant. If you’re using your blog to help you create influence or to get clients for projects or services, then marketing every once in a while isn’t such a bad thing for you to think about. If you’re trying to make money via affiliate marketing or MLM (multi-level marketing), that’s not such a bad thing either. If your blog happens to be popular enough and someone wants to pay for the space to add some kind of banner ad to it, that’s not so bad either. Each person has to make a decision on what they hope their blog will do or what they want to put on their blog. You just need to be aware of how these things might affect the people who visit your blog and determine how much or how little it might affect their enjoyment when they stop by. Also, you need to be aware that adding text ads that don’t ever have anything to do with what your content it about opens you up to someone reporting you and having your blog lose it’s Google PR (page rank). That’s what happened to my blog, although, as some of you know, I think PR is overrated anyway.

Something many bloggers forget to do is internally link to their own previous blog posts. With WordPress there are plugins that can handle some of this for you, and I know that with other blog platforms there are programs that can also do that. But any time you can link to your own content gives you the opportunity to keep people on your blog, get them interested in other things that they may be looking for, and helps to show your expertise while helping to spread your influence. It also helps with SEO, especially if you’re familiar with the concept of anchor links, which basically means using a link to highlight a certain word that is either also in the link or that will take you to a page that specifically talks about that word or topic.

Then there’s the concept of how frequent you want to put out blog posts, and what time you’re putting out blog posts. I happen to have four blogs, and my frequency schedule is different for all of them. For instance, on this blog I write 6 to 7 posts a week. On another blog I write for a five posts a week, but the posts are relegated to the business day. On the third blog the idea is to have 3 to 4 posts a week. And on my fourth blog I’m shooting for one post a week at this time, as it’s very new and it’s going to take a little bit of time for me to figure out everything I’m hoping that blog will end up being. I have a goal for that one, as I mentioned way back when that people should think about when they create a blog, but how to fully manifest it is something that one does not have to figure out before they start blogging. To me, it’s always important to just start something and get it going. As to what time of day… well, that one’s still under consideration, as I’ve yet to figure out whether it’s best to post in the morning or in the afternoon; posting in the evening means I risk a blog post not showing up in some areas until the following day, and that I don’t want to happen.

I know you’re starting to get tired, so the final thing to talk about is how to get the word out about your blog. You can’t just write a whole lot of posts and expect people to show up; blogging doesn’t work that way. You have many options available to you. One, you can send a link to your blog to everybody you know via email. Two, you can hook up on something like Twitter and make sure that every blog post also post itself to Twitter. Three, what you’ve done for Twitter you can also do for other social media outlets such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Four, you can make sure that every blog post automatically “pings” to what’s known as a blog pinging service such as Ping-o-Matic; this means it alerts blog directories that you’ve written a new post. Or five, you can learn how to work the blogging community and blog networking via the concept of commenting on a lot of other blogs. I’ve done all of these, and the one that I found most effective is commenting on other blogs. It just offers the most options across the board, especially if those blogs happen to have CommentLuv. It also takes the most time, but you can get the most enjoyment out of doing it.

And that’s the end of this killer pillar post on better blogging. I’ve covered a lot of ground here, and I make no promises that I didn’t leave anything out; after all, this is a huge subject. Any questions, just ask; I’m going to bed.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell

Why I’m Now “Mitch Mitchell”

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 15, 2011

I know the title of this post could seem confusing to some people, but to others they’re probably only now getting another introduction to who I am. My name is Mitch Mitchell; has been for, oh, at least 35 years or do. “Mitch” isn’t the first name I was born with; no, I’m not giving it, but for some people it’s not hard to find. I just don’t choose to use the name, haven’t since I was 16, but people who met me through someone else who gave them the other name tend to use it . Since I don’t like it, I just choose not to tell it to anyone, even if my main organization is called T. T. Mitchell Consulting, Inc.

For all the years I’ve been blogging I’ve always gone by Mitch. It really hadn’t occurred to me to have it being anything else. Yet, at some point near the end of last year I figured it was time to start putting my entire name into blogging. I really hadn’t thought much about it until I started writing my posts about influence. Realizing that I wanted a bigger slice of the blogging and overall internet and social media pie, and other reasons, it suddenly came to me that many people by this time might know “Mitch”, but they didn’t know “Mitch Mitchell”.

Of course, just saying that means nothing without some background. So, here’s a part of the thought process for it all, something that you might think for yourself at some point.

1. I have a lot of articles on the internet. I have my EzineArticles posts. I have articles on my S&S site. I have articles on a lot of other websites that I’m not going to list. I’m in a lot of regular magazines as well, many of them health care related, but other topics as well. I started thinking that it would be easier for people who might see some of that stuff to realize that I’m the same guy who was writing all that stuff, even if it’s across the board.

2. There’s one prominent Mitch Mitchell and one a little less prominent that I’m competing in name against. Let’s face it, I’m not going to overtake the Mitch Mitchell who used to play drums for Jimi Hendrix any time soon, deceased or not. His first name wasn’t really Mitch either, but John. There’s also a reporter for the newspaper in Fort Worth whose name I see all the time; being born in Fort Worth, that’s a strange coincidence to say the least. I think I compete with him on a regular basis; at least in the top 50 listings of the name I come up at #16 because of my business blog, and at #23 because of this blog. As a matter of fact, out of the top 50 listings only 2 of them aren’t me or the drummer, and none of them the reporter; I can live with that.

3. There’s another “Mitch”. Actually, I’ve known of Mitchell Allen of Morpho Designs for many years, but our paths rarely crossed until fall of last year when we both ended up on BloggerLuv (which I’m not putting up a link for because it’s possibly gone forever, as it’s not showing up anymore for now) and started talking. Suddenly, being “Mitch” didn’t make much sense anymore with their being two of us showing up in a lot of the same places, and he’d always had his last name attached so it made sense that I do it as well.

4. For that matter, there are a lot of “Mitch’s” out there, even some female ones. Sure, my image accompanies me on most blogs, but I’ve found that if you don’t have a Typepad account your image won’t show up there. Suddenly, I’m just “Mitch” on the wind without any real recognition of who I might be. At least being listed under my full name will get me fairly quickly on a search engine; just the first name wasn’t going to cut it.

5. Of course, my business name is T. T. Mitchell, and I could have gone with that, as I did on LinkedIn. However, it’s so weird having people calling me “T. T.” there, and I’m trying to figure out if I can change it. In the long run whenever I meet people and they call me that I tell them to call me Mitch, and I realized I didn’t want to get into that kind of confusion across the board.

And there you go. It might seem like kind of a complicated process, but I’ve noticed many of you who comment here use both your first and last name, and since I have a long range goal for using my full name it makes sense for me to change over to it now. From a marketing standpoint, it seems to be a no-brainer. In my opinion, it’s much better than a keyword name any day of the week. What are your general thoughts on the subject?

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2011 Mitch Mitchell

If Men Are Pigs, What Are Women?

Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Jan 7, 2011

The woman to the right if following me on Twitter; or is she? After all, the name next to the image on Twitter isn’t a male or female name; it’s the name of a business. Or at least something that I assume is supposed to be some kind of business, because all the posts coming from the account are sales links.

She’s “following” me

I’m not following this account, but I went to take a look since it’s following me, and it has almost 5,000 followers, and overwhelmingly it’s men following the account. Trust me, not all of those men are interested in the product, and probably aren’t paying any attention to the posts. They saw the picture of the comely young lady, who’s very attractive, and just automatically followed the account.

She’s “following” me as well

It’s no wonder women think many men are pigs. We often do tend to follow very pretty and shapely women wherever they pop up, and sometimes we just can’t help ourselves, can we? After all, the images are the perfect fantasy of what we think women should be, even though we know that, for the most part, these women don’t look like this all the time, and they’re certainly not going to be interested in most of us. Not only that, but we’re not meeting any of these women with images like this. There are plenty of other attractive “real” women to interact with on both Twitter and Facebook, women who actually have brains and minds and can and will talk to us.

Cosmopolitan

And yet, I’m still left with this thought that if men are such pigs, then what are women? I mean, look at this cover from Cosmopolitan, a magazine geared towards women. If this image would be considered as a fantasy image for men, what is it considered for women? If it’s supposed to show women what they can be, does that mean the women who buy it don’t feel they’re already the women they can be?

Marie Claire

Here’s another one, Marie Claire, which is a bit more international, yet has Beyoncé with a little bit of cleavage hanging out. This is a magazine geared towards women; what does this say to the women who are encouraged to buy it? And if a man picked it up, why is he considered a pig? I mean, have you ever walked by the counters at the grocery store? All the magazines geared towards women have pictures like this on them? I’ve seen the guys stop to look, but never pick one up for the fear of how women looking at them might react. Yet women pick them up and buy them; what’s the double standard mean here?

Fitness

Not that I mind looking at Kelly Ripa in a bikini showing her fit body, but it does beg the question that I can’t answer; why wouldn’t magazines geared towards women have either men or other types of pictures on them? I actually understand the fashion magazines, but these other types of magazines?

Rena Mero

What it all comes down to is marketing, plain and simple. Studies have shown that when it comes to marketing, men and women actually like looking at the same thing, which is bodies that become the fantasy for them in some fashion. It’s like the quote the female wrestler Rena Mero always said in the ring: “Women want to be me, men want to be with me.” Both sides can deny it as much as they want to, but the proof is in the pudding (I’ll have to learn where that phrase came from one of these days).

I don’t want anyone getting the wrong idea. I’m not decrying any types of images on magazines. I’m certainly not saying women are pigs, and I’m taking men, well, most men anyway, from the category of being pigs also. What I’m saying is that the best marketing sometimes seems to be to go after the basis instincts of people, understanding the triggers, and hitting them hard.

I had a guy who admitted to me that about 15 years ago his company was just doing “okay”, and what they did was hired 3 young, pretty women right out of college and sent them around 4 states to market their business to hospitals. He said they almost always were let in without an appointment and at least got to talk to CFOs, who were mainly men. And they didn’t fare all that much worse with the women CFOs they encountered. Dare I say that sex really sells?

For those of us without the pedigree to even think of using this as a weapon, it becomes encumber upon us to figure out different strategies for marketing ourselves and our wares. Frankly, I don’t have an answer for anyone; if I did, I might be rich right now. But I will go this far in saying that I think I might do pretty well if I could take this little guy along with me. It’s not sexy, but it’s cute, and people tend to like cute as well. Who’s with me on the puppy?

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