All posts by Mitch Mitchell

I'm an independent consultant in many fields, so I have a lot to share.
Blogging, Motivation/Inspiration

Does Your Writing Touch People?

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You know, last month I did a series of posts that began with the term “blogging tips”. The whole series was done with the intention of giving people some shorter pieces on blogging as opposed to some of my longer pieces on the subject. I’m not sure how much people liked them as opposed to my normal writing but I do know that traffic increased some, though I think it was for the post on Getty Images more than the blogging posts, as it seemed to have touched a nerve.


It may be polluted
but it’s my lake

I’ve always said that when you write a blog you should be aiming for one of three things: to educate, to entertain, or to inform. You can integrate them into each other if you wish, but you should at least achieve one of those three things with each post.

What I also hope to do with each post is touch someone in some fashion, most of the time in a positive way. If I can make a connection with someone that goes beyond “nice post” status, to the point where that person decides what I’ve given them is strong enough that they can use it in some fashion for their lives, then it’s all good.

I write a lot of motivational posts with that goal in mind, but there’s a post I wrote that was titled Know Your Audience Part II that touched a young man (okay, he’s 38, but that’s young to me) named Alan and encouraged him to write a post linking back to it because of some thoughts he’d been having at the time. The post he wrote was called Why Cicero’s 6 Mistakes Of Man Is All You Need. What’s funny about it is it’s the type of post that, had I read it first, it would have inspired me to write something.

I’m going to own up to something here. I’ve been in business 11 years, but the last 3 1/2 have been horrendous. I’m surviving by the skin of my teeth, which is never any fun. Frankly, there are times when I’m ready to chuck it all in and go jump in the lake; then I remember I can’t swim, I don’t want fish touching me, our lake is considered one of the most polluted in the world (yes, I said world) even though I like walking at it, I’m scared of dying, I know bugs would somehow be involved, my mother would blame herself for some reason, and my own mantra that states “Every day is another chance to start again.” I wouldn’t be true to my own mantra if I took myself out, would I?

And, of course, hearing about things like Alan being inspired by something I wrote, a guy I didn’t even know or know anything about until the middle of July, even though he wrote his post in January. And I realize that’s what it’s all about. It’s about having the opportunity to help change someone else’s life by being honest and forthright and calling out bad behavior when it’s exhibited and trying to teach and motivate and, well, sometimes just plain ol’ have fun.

I’m feeling pretty good as I write this; how many times do you get to feel this way when you write a blog post? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could feel it more often? I appreciate all of you; thanks for continuing to stop by and read what I have to say.
 

Health

The Cleanse

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One of the strangest things about getting older is that you suddenly start talking about some things that as a younger person you’d never talk about because they’re uncomfortable. I hear that women talk about a lot of stuff that men would never entertain broaching, but even this topic is beyond many of them.

Some quick history. I’ve had a problem with my left leg for almost 2 years. My thigh is numb almost all the time to some degree. Actually, not the entire thigh, but the left outside area, near my knee. Sometimes it’s fairly mild, not even an inconvenience; sometimes it’s much worse and spread over a larger area of my thigh.

In the last 6 to 9 months I’ve started having some other issues with my leg. Sometimes it hurts a lot, and sometimes it adds burning into the mix. Every once in awhile I have this nerve, called an IT Band, that pops out and goes down my leg and on the outside of my knee, and that’s when the most pain comes.

Mitchell doesn’t let pain stop him from doing anything, but I’m not a total male idiot either, so I finally decided to go to a doctor to take a look at it. He had me get a back x-ray (the first ever after having back and related trouble for more than 20 years), which I didn’t quite understand, but when the results came back it showed that I had some degeneration in my lower back on the left side, the result from back injuries in the 90’s, and he recommended I go to physical therapy.

I was about 3 weeks into physical therapy when the therapist asked me to go into one of the treatment rooms for a private conversation. Once in there, he asked me if the doctor had ever told me anything about the x-ray. I told him just that the doc said I had arthritis of the back, which is why I was there. He said that the x-ray also produced a second result saying that there was excessive stool in my colon. Supposedly, it’s not something radiologists will ever point out unless it’s serious, as it could have something to do with back pain.

I didn’t have any back pain before physical therapy, but now I was having some. However, I’d had that colonoscopy back in November, and the docs ended up saying my colon was slightly twisted, and that could be messing things up (yeah, I see the pun lol).

I came home to talk to my wife about it and I knew what was coming. If there’s anyone who’s always talked about colon health, it’s her. She’s done all sorts of things to keep herself regular and cleaned out, stuff I’d never consider doing. However, her suggestion to me was to go on a 14-day colon cleanse of some sort. She said it would get things going and that I might even lose some weight behind it (look another pun).

I decided to give it a shot, so I bought the product you see in the image above (click on it & it’ll take you to the page I bought the product from ) Organic Total Body 14 Day Cleanse, which is what my wife recommended I try. It’s an all natural thing that comes with 3 different bottles of pills, each one numbered.

Each day I started out taking 2 pills from the 1st bottle first thing in the morning. You have to take them either 30 minutes before you eat anything or 2 hours after eating; I took all of them before eating anything. Thirty minutes later you take 3 pills from bottle #2, then go about your day. At some point early evening you take 3 more pills from bottle #2 and 2 pills from bottle #3. Then you’re done for the night. The package also comes with 3 small packages of a natural laxative, in case you need a boost at some point.

I needed a boost on day one because I felt like I was already locked up. For years I’ve taken Metamucil to help me “go”, but I wasn’t going to take any of it while on this stuff. So I took the laxative the evening of day one.

On day two, things started happening, and I was mentally prepared for it but not physically prepared. I went to the bathroom 5 times that first day. Thing is, 3 of those times weren’t what I’d term “normal”. Okay, since I’m disclosing stuff, and you need to know it, the 3 non-normal times everything came out in liquid form. That’s kind of how it was when I had to clean my system out for the colonoscopy, but it just felt different this time around.

I’m not going to go into an every day thing, even though I kept a journal, just to see what would happen. Every day after the second day, except 3 days, I went 4 times. One day I went 6 times, one day 3 times, and the last day only once; that was weird. The day after the last pills I went 4 times, and I’m back on a regular schedule now.

How did I feel? Truthfully, at the end I didn’t feel any different, but based on how often I went I had to have been much cleaner than when I started. Every day when I went 4 times half of those times it came out as liquid; on the day I went 6 times it came out as liquid 4 of those times. I didn’t have any “cheap” bowel movements during this period either.

And I lost 2 1/2 pounds, which, along with previous weight loss, brought me to my lowest weight since 1997; wow! I’ve since put on a couple of pounds but that’s about it, and I think, since it just ended this week, that after the weekend I’ll get back on the stick and see if I can lose those couple of pounds and even more weight.

That’s my experience with a cleanse. My wife believes I should think about doing it every 3 months to protect myself. It seems that, if you do some reading, going regular is important to remove poisons from the body, and some of the stuff you learn if you don’t have good colon health is scary.

As for my leg… well, physical therapy has ended after 10 sessions, and I’ve learned some stretching exercises that help a lot. I have fewer episodes of pain when I’m not exercising and the pain I do have is less extreme. When I exercise, I know how to alleviate some of the pain every once in awhile and when I can’t, ibuprofen in my friend. I might end up having a nerve conduction study to see if more can be done about it, but one therapist said I might have to deal with the numbness the rest of my life; sigh… well, if it’s not painful, I can handle it.

Yes, this was one of those “I’m Just Sharing” posts that I’ve shared that you might not want to know about, but it’s important that you know, especially as you get older. Now I have to go find some cookies! 😉
 

Blogging, Research

Commenting On Similarly Themed And Niched Blogs

47 Comments

A recommendation I see all the time by people who proclaim to teach you how to increase traffic to your blog and to get juice for your blog is through commenting; that part is actually correct. The second half of that recommendation is to only comment on blogs that talk about the same thing your blog talks about, with the expectation that people will see that who are already interested in your topic and they’ll pop over.

That sounds great in theory but I’m here to tell you that it’s kind of a fallacy in more ways than one. Yes, I’ve done an experiment and I’m here to give you some shocking results. It’s been awhile since I’ve done a research project, but at least I got paid for this one.

Let me explain. I was paid by someone to go out and visit blogs in a certain niche and then write comments under his name. This is a client for whom I’ve done work for 3 years and he’s a good guy, and of course I got paid well for it. Y’all know I’m not one of those types that will only write one line either. Since I knew his topic really well I knew that I could write comments that made sense and were on point with the niche, which is real estate.

The experiment was to write 50 comments on real estate related blogs. I could deviate as long as the topic was real estate in some fashion, which included legal and finance blogs. It took me 3 days to get this done, mainly because many sites weren’t really blogs, and some blogs didn’t accept comments. Some were only highlights of property as well; nothing to say there. I used the “blog” search feature of Google to find these blogs.

What happened? Out of 50 comments, my comment showed up 29 times; that’s it. Out of those 21 times the comment didn’t show up, 16 times no comments showed up at all, which either means no one else commented or the writer didn’t approve anyone’s comments.

Out of the 29 times that the comment I left showed up, it got a response only twice; yup, that’s it. On only 4 blogs total was there use of CommentLuv. And on one of the blogs that my comment got a comment, the guy asked a question, which I responded to and that guy responded to that comment as well.

So, what do we assume? Are these people typical bloggers, in that they don’t know what some of us consider as the rules of blogging in responding to comments? Do these people only write and not really monitor the blogs, and thus never approve any of the comments? Do these people not want someone from the same industry in their space, taking away from what they’re trying to do? Are they, in essence, blog sculpting, or just making sure their advertising is the only one, blog or not?

In the past I’ve been the lone voice that’s said commenting only on blogs whose niche or topic is the same as yours doesn’t always work. I tried in the past commenting only on leadership blogs using my business blog link and found that many of those blogs never approved my comments either, and some didn’t approve any comments. Isn’t that a strange thing to discover when it’s a business blog, and you’d think that those people would have been taught that engagement is what they’re shooting for if their blog says it’s accepting comments, unlike what Seth Godin does, which is to not accept comments at all? At least when I comment on SEO blogs and use that business blog’s account those people always respond; that’s an industry that knows better, right?

Of course, me being me, I have a secondary reason for writing this particular post. I know there are a lot of people who monitor their comments for more than just content. There are some folks who delete links from sites whose niche doesn’t correspond with their own. They do that to stay in keeping with what they believe the search engines like and don’t like. I’m not sure how true all that is, and it’s hard to discount that as working or not.

I have to say that it’s rare for me to delete links from legitimate comments, though I have done it. If there’s a link going back to something I totally disagree with I will remove the link and the “love” if you will. But most of those links come from spammers and thus it’s an easy call; that’s why it’s rare that someone who really cares writes a comment and represents something that might be sleazy or salacious or something that just irks me to no end, like “payday loans”. I don’t care where you’re coming from otherwise; if you have something to share and it’s not stupid, use your link, get your love, and hopefully you’ll come back. Who knows, we might work together in some fashion one day; that would be nice as well.

If you’ve been waiting to comment only on specific types of blogs, stop. If you feel like commenting, whether it’s highly ranked or in your niche, do it. Reciprocity works in many different ways, and you never know when you’ll meet a friend.
 

Blogging, Business

What Will You Do For More Followers?

39 Comments

Once again it’s video time. The premise is simple, but I’ll lay it out in words, then let the video take over from there.

Those of you who read this blog know that I’ve talked often about the concept of influence. In my mind, influence brings you so much more than when people have no idea who you are. Influence is money; influence can be power, or at least having enough pull to get things done positively or negatively. When people trust you and see you as an authority, there’s nothing that can stop you, not even those people who inevitably won’t like you just because of who you are.

With that in mind, I ask the question and talk about this concept of just what will you do for more followers. This ponies off a conversation I was having with someone who’d canceled another meeting with me, which led me to ask the question about priorities and people, and a response she gave me that I countered later on. That part’s not in the video, but something else is.

So enjoy the video, think about some things I say, then let me and everyone else know what your opinion is. Go ahead; don’t be shy. 🙂


 

Computing

Why You Need To Run Your Antivirus Programs More Often

23 Comments

Taking a break from the blogging posts because I have something serious to bring up. It’s on the topic of computer maintenance. It’s on the topic of running your antivirus programs. And it’s on the topic of trying to be careful with updates.


by Jeffrey Beall via Flickr

Some weeks ago I updated my main computer with what was at the time the most recent Adobe Flash update. Immediately my computer freaked out, and it took me 2 hours to finally figure out how to get rid of it. Actually it should have come to me much sooner, but I was frustrated. What I did was run a system restore, and I went back 2 months prior just to make sure I was going to cover everything. I hadn’t loaded any other programs that I could think of so I wasn’t worried about losing anything.

I ended up having to run it twice. The first time it didn’t take. The second time it said it didn’t take, but when I booted the computer up it said it had restored itself to a previous time, and I’ve had no problems ever since.

So, when a week later the laptop started acting goofy, I said to myself “well, I guess that Adobe flash update is just going to mess with everything.” This time I went to system restore immediately, it said it worked, and I believed everything was fine.

Only everything wasn’t fine. The update was gone but the laptop wasn’t working. Actually it would work for about a minute, then I couldn’t type anything, couldn’t open most programs, and many windows I tried to look at disappeared as soon as I moved my mouse. What was troubling is that when I booted up in safe mode to look around I encountered the same issue; what the hey?

I knew this had nothing to do with Adobe. I knew this was either virus or malware related. But I tried to figure out how it got on my system. I have antivirus software, AVG, and a firewall. I figured I had pretty good protection; what was the deal?

I downloaded Stinger and ran it on the laptop, remembering to load it in that free minute I had. It ran and found nothing; that meant it wasn’t a virus, but malware. I went to look at my AVG program after another reboot. It said that my computer wasn’t fully protected, and to click some box to fix it. I clicked the box and it did its thing then said “fixed”.

I then looked at it and saw that it hadn’t run a scan of the laptop in 5 months; oy! I thought about that because my main computer runs a scan once a week, and I realized the problem is that I always have my main computer on but my laptop I might run an hour a day, if that.

Also, I tend to take more chances on the laptop than I do on my main computer, doing more surfing because my main computer is used for most of my writing and emailing. Bad idea, especially when I didn’t have all my protections on.

This time, I didn’t have to reboot to run the virus scan. I put it on the strongest setting, told it to scan the entire computer, and it did its thing. Turns out I had 78 pieces of malware and tracking cookies on the laptop; ouch! AVG cleaned them all out. Then, just to make sure it was all good, I went online and ran an online virus scan of the laptop, just to see if it found anything; all good.

The next night I ran Spybot, since I was up until 3:15 in the morning trying to fix the laptop (I spent 4 hours on it; ouch), and it found nothing new. That means AVG did its thing, and it taught me a very important lesson, one I knew already for my main computer but one I hadn’t thought about for the laptop. Make sure to scan your system at least once a week if you use your laptop or computer even once. It’s just a smart thing to do.