5 Things I Do Well Online
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 11, 2012
I was over at Peggy Baron’s blog called Adventures In Internet Marketing where she wrote this interesting little post titled 5 Things I Do Well With Internet Marketing. I thought it was an interesting idea to pursue, only I’m not going totally on the internet marketing piece.
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I figure that I’ve got a long online history and there’s some things I’ve gotten right in spite of lots of failure. Yeah, I know, I’m the guy who wrote a post saying that it’s never really failure, so I’ll modify it and say there’s a lot I haven’t done right for one reason or another. But I have had some successes and there are some things I do well, and thus I’m going to share these 5 things with you.
1. I have my business website listed on more than 10,000 sites and directories for the term “diversity”. Even though that term scares a lot of people in this country (it does!), it’s important enough for me to be listed all over the world for it because one never knows. The thing is, I can’t tell you how I did it, but if it got picked up it’s all good right?
2. I have a lot of articles on the internet. With my own 5 blogs, lots of other blogs I write for, some guest posting, interviews, and articles in many places, I’ve made sure to get my name out there. It’s still hard to overcome Jimi Hendrix drummer and this reporter for the Ft. Worth newspaper in some respects but it all builds up not only a following but a profile. And it gives me a lot of material to turn into something else, as I’m working on the editing of my next book, which is a compilation of some of my early newsletters and blog posts off my business blog.
3. I’ve got commenting on lots of blogs down to a science without realizing it. I have a large group of blogs that I visit regularly and yet just last night I commented on 4 or 5 new blogs I’d never seen before. I’m not sure I’d ever commented on Peggy’s blog before last night. I think it’s important because it means that every time I do that I have the possibility of reaching a new audience in some way.
4. I talk to a lot of people on Twitter, including some famous people. In my post yesterday about Twitter I mentioned a couple of ladies I think are spectacular from my past that I’m connected with. I’ve talked to other famous or well known people over the years as well, including having the opportunity to help Guy Kawasaki edit his book once. I’ve also helped other people edit their books and read some books that were sent to me to do reviews on here and there. I think that’s pretty neat; it shows that I’ve earned at least enough respect where people trust my opinion and, oddly enough, my perceived “clout”.
5. I respond to people who are “real”. I think that’s important, and it’s also an important distinction. Back in February I talked about bad blog comments being like spam and how if I didn’t think the comments were good comments but weren’t bad enough to send to spam that I wasn’t going to respond to them. In essence that means I respond to a lot of people, and they seem to appreciate it. I’ll often follow those people back based on what CommentLuv says they’ve written about and if I leave a comment, I’m sure they appreciate that as well. And I do that for all 5 of my blogs; that’s a lot of writing and following.
There you go; now, what can you say are your top 5 ‘whatever’ as it applies to being online?
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My Twitter Strategy, Courtesy Of Adrienne
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Apr 2, 2012
By the title, if you’re in the know you know that the inspiration for this post comes courtesy of our friend Adrienne Smith, who wrote a post that I commented on last week titled My Secret Twitter Strategy. I’m not going to reveal her specific strategy, since she took the time to create this neat little video about it, but I will say that there’s a bit of automation, if you will, taking place that helps her out.
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In my case, I can’t quite say I have a lot of automation, but I have a brief bit. I do use technology, but it’s certainly not automated. Also, it takes a lot more time for what are results less than what she gets, but I think the important thing is having a strategy to begin with.
My first strategy is that every single blog post I write or have, if you will, goes to Twitter automatically. I thought about the question of whether to create separate accounts for each blog and decided my mind just can’t handle being 5 or 6 different people so it all goes out under the one name. In a way that matters because everything gets mixed together and my audience might get confused. In another way that’s what this particular blog is all about anyway, so having a lot more original content going through one name works for me right now.
The next thing I do is go through the list of local people that I’ve created using an older and better version of TweetDeck to see what’s specifically going on with them. I feel it’s important enough for me to make sure I take care of my local networking to keep my presence known by them. It’s a small group of around 45 people that I stick to because they’ll talk back to me. Others who never responded to anything I had to say I removed, figuring they could care less so why waste my time on them.
The final thing I do takes some time, and I’m not sure everyone could do it or want to do it but it’s my strategy, and it works because I have a smartphone. By using the application on my phone called TweetCaster, I can literally go through hundreds, possibly thousands, of tweets if I need to. Whereas on TweetDeck I tell it to only keep the last 250 messages, I don’t tell the phone to do any such thing.
It’s a good thing I speed read, that’s for sure. If I don’t stay on top of it I can find myself two days behind the curve on checking on tweets. The program will break it into time chunks so that you don’t have to look at everything unless you want to, but that still leaves a heck of a lot of messages.
What do I do? I do through the link of everyone that I’m following, which is just under 900 people, looking at topics that I think interest me, check the links out quickly, then retweet them. Sometimes I retweet with a comment, showing that I looked at the link, while other times I’ll save the link via Evernote so I can go back and leave a comment on it later when I’m back on the big machine and still retweet it.
This strategy does two things for me. One, people love seeing their items retweeted, and they’ll often thank me for it and might pop over to this blog, or any other blog if they notice a link to a blog post I’ve recently written. Two, by going back to their blogs later on and leaving a comment, it helps introduce me to them, or remind them that I’m around, and they’ll potentially pop over to one of my blogs to say something. Either way, it helps drive traffic to my sites.
How well does it work? Well, compared to Adriene, the direct traffic I get from Twitter is around 4% referral traffic for this blog, but it’s a whopping 20% of referral traffic for my business blog. I’m thinking that’s pretty neat. Twitter seems to be her top referrer doing it her way.
Anyway, that’s my strategy; what’s yours?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Verify Information That’s Not Yours
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 29, 2012
Well, yesterday was an interesting day in this country, at least in Florida. I decided that I needed to address this issue, especially on this blog, and further decided that it needed to be a video. The title speaks for itself; anyway, here’s the video:
I hope I got my point across, and I’m doubting there’s anyone who can dispute what I said there. Yeah, I know, it might take some time here and there to do it, but in many cases I think it’s important enough to do. You never know who you might hurt by not doing it.
See, short post, short video; I can do it. 
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Time To Start Talking About Marketing – Real Marketing
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 13, 2012
I’ve written around 1,250 posts on this blog since 2007. It’s been a wild ride, and I’ve had a lot of fun. I’ve touched upon some topics often, and one of those topics is marketing. It turns out I’ve written 115 posts on marketing, and my very first post on the subject came in October 2008 when I first started marketing my ebook Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool.
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However, that was internet marketing, and as I took a look back through the archives I realized that most of the time I’ve talked about marketing as it relates to making money online. I’m not even including the posts where I’ve talked about affiliate programs; we’d have to add another 43 posts into the mix.
I did write an article on the reality of making money by blogging, and it turned out to be quite a popular post, at least by readers, even though it didn’t get a lot of comments. And yet, even in that post, where I got real in telling people how one really makes money blogging, I realized that I missed something, something that many people probably both think about and don’t think about at the same time.
That “something” is marketing, plain and simple. What’s funny is that I actually wrote a post back in November, around the same time as the post about making money by blogging, titled Social Media Marketing Is Just Marketing, and even in that post I didn’t talk about marketing, or the reason why marketing is important. I almost feel ashamed; almost that is. I tend to believe that all of us get to a point where we suddenly begin focusing on something, and when that happens it’s time to take steps forward, time to do something about it, time to talk about it. And as I went through a period last year when I was talking a lot about influence, I’m going to be obsessive for a short period about marketing.
Here’s the reality. Many people probably aren’t going to be interested in this series of posts coming up, which is why I’m writing this preamble on the topic. Let’s talk about who these posts probably aren’t for. If you have a job and you’re happy with that job, these posts won’t be for you. If you’re not running a business, consulting, small, medium sized, these posts probably won’t for you. If all you want to do is affiliate marketing and nothing else, these posts won’t be for you.
But if you want to work on your overall business, no matter what it is, and you want to read about the trials and tribulations and ideas and, hopefully, successes of marketing, and I do mean marketing, not sales, since marketing leads to sales if you’re lucky, and I mean sales of all kinds, then stick around with me on my journey, which can become your journey. I have big dreams to fulfill, things I want to do, need to do, and I can’t do any of them if I don’t step up my marketing, my real marketing, marketing mainly for my offline businesses, some of which can be done online, some of which can be done offline.
It won’t be all I write or talk about; after all, this is I’m Just Sharing, right? But it’s going to become the next focus, and quickly. Are you with me?
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
Black Web Friday – 3/9/12
Posted by Mitch Mitchell on Mar 9, 2012
Welcome to Black Web Friday; is the message starting to spread yet? I have to say that February was interesting because I saw a few more people across the web that were highlighting black social media people or bloggers and that was pretty neat. Of course, it was Black History month as well, and so far I haven’t found anyone who’s written about it in March except for me, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening, so if you find another list anywhere be sure to drop me a line; if my name is on it let me know sooner!
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Here we go, and today might as well also be called Ladies Day. I’m starting off with my buddy Vernessa Taylor, who writes Local Business Coach Online. She talks about business development, both online and offline, social media, affiliate marketing, blogging, and a whole lot more. She also created the neat covers for my book on management and my management CD set which you see there on the left (go ahead, look at it, click on it to learn more, and then think about buying; I dare you lol). She also does business coaching, and has her categories lined up pretty neatly in the header. You’ll learn a lot from this blog with a standard commenting system.
Next we have the blog eponymously named Marlee Ward, and she talks about business; being in business, making business decisions, business motivation, etc. She gives a lot of tips to people thinking about working for themselves and man, is this a blog I need to read every once in awhile for a pick-me-up. I loved her post on figuring out when you’ve made it; great stuff. She also does business coaching, and one of these days I just might have to look her up for that.
The next blog is LogAllot by Sonia Winland, and it’s also a blog about business and business tips. She also talks about blogs and blogging design, as well as travel; that’s somewhat different from the norm. She’s got great taste as well as she included me in on her blogs of the month series in February. You might think this is a bit of quid pro quo but she was already on the list to be highlighted.
Business is the theme today and that brings us to the last person being highlighted, Pamla Whorne. Her blog is also about business and business tips, as well as marketing, publicity, blogging and being online. She does consulting, speaking, and teaching, has courses, and is a published author. She considers herself a social media junkie and technology geek; aren’t we all? This lady knows how to market; I definitely need to study her lessons better.
That’s it for this week; have a great and safe weekend.
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Mitch Mitchell
I'm Just Sharing is where I share my thoughts on internet marketing, writing, blogging and many other things. You never know what I'll be posting on. So keep coming back, read, enjoy, and buy something! ;)
