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I’m Supposed To Ask You To…

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It’s Friday, and I figured it was time for something a little intriguing, more of a question and comment and a wish that I could remember what got me thinking about this.

Actually, that’s not quite accurate; I remember what got me thinking about it lately. I was reading a post by Larry Brauner of Online Social Networking, whom I mentioned as one of my early commenters, called Top 10 Ways To Get Facebook Page Fans. As I was reading each of the points, I smiled when I realized that half of them involved asking people to join in some fashion that was more direct than just writing about it on one’s blog, which I’ve also done, as well as adding a widget, which you see there to the right.

The thing that made me smile wasn’t so much that Larry had half of his points saying that as much as the reality that I’ve read often how we’re supposed to ask people to sign up for this or that, or help us out in some fashion. As a matter of fact, I did that very thing just over 2 years ago when I first stated that I wanted more RSS subscribers, and here and there I’ve asked that question again, adding a failed contest along the way.

It’s strange because days ago I wrote about how bad I’ve been in promoting my own products, and now I realize that I’m pretty bad at asking people to sign up for anything on this blog, or other blogs, or my website, or even to follow me on Twitter. What is this thing all about? What the heck is wrong with me?

Actually, I think it ties in with a conversation Sire and I were having in a comment area about talking ourselves up. He felt it was kind of unseemly, while I said if you can back it up and were actually telling the truth that it’s not such a bad thing. And I truly believe that; yet, here I sit, not really talking about myself all that much in the things I do for work, and the things I believe I could do for others.

True, this blog isn’t necessarily a blog to market myself, but it has been a component over the years. Early on, I used to talk about all these different methods I’ve tried in making money online, and I used to disclose my monthly income all the time; not so much now. The truth is that I believe I’m kind of a talented guy. Sure, you wouldn’t know it by that image above; yeah, I drew that for one of those online survey things.

I’m definitely not an artist by any means. But I have been a songwriter, have written two books now, helped a hospital make more than $700 million in revenue in one year, helped a guy get an $80,000 contract two weeks after just one business coaching session, had articles in many magazines over the course of the last 8 years and gave a keynote presentation at a health care conference in 2007. And I make a mean meatloaf, even if I might mess up tuna every once in awhile (only once; read the story).

Other than writing the books, who knew any of that other stuff? For that matter, what else don’t you know about me? And trust me, there’s plenty more. That’s my fault because, though I feel I disclose a lot, I really don’t promote myself all that much. It’s one reason why next week I’ll be having those evening posts about my products; gotta promote something, right?

Anyway, Larry’s right, and it does me little good to go out kicking and screaming against it because, well, overall it’s just not my style. But I did talk about wanting to be known as a big time blogger, so it behooves me to just come out and ask. In my way, of course.

So, as humbly as I can, I’d like to ask that, if you participate, you assist me in this fashion, and of course I do it as well when I can, and we can all win:

1. Hook up with my Facebook business page (I hate that it’s still called “fan” page, but oh well), and of course hook up with me on Facebook as well.

2. If a post grabs you enough, whether you comment on it or not, and you’re on Twitter, click that “retweet” thing at the top right of the post and share it with others. I went with Topsy because it doesn’t make you add an application to your Twitter account to use.

3. If you like a post, whether you comment or not, think about clicking on that little “like” thing at the end of each post. If you want to know the truth, I really have no idea where that goes or if it shows anywhere else except on the post, but it’s there looking pretty lonely most of the time.

4. If you’re predisposed to do so, ask me to write a guest post for you. For this one, you’ll have to send me an email, which is under the “contact” tab at the top of the blog. I refuse to ask people if I can write a guest post for their blog, but I’ve asked people to write guest posts for this blog, and I have written a few here and there this year, but nowhere close to as many as I had thought I would. And I know the guest posting rules since I wrote some, and our friend Pat wrote a wonderful one last week on someone else’s blog and has responded to every person that’s commented; great job Pat!

That’s all I have. Now, other than next week, watch me go another year before remembering to ask for something; oh well… 😉 And be on the lookout closer to the end of the year, because next year I’m going webinar crazy; well, for me at least.

Advantus Decorative Vision Motivational Poster - thenerds.net

Advantus Decorative Vision Motivational Poster

Web Stuff

How Influential Are You Online?

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On Twitter yesterday, one of the folks I followed asked who they thought were the most influential Syracuse social media people. There were a few names bandied about, but I have to admit that somewhere along the way I was hoping that someone would mention me. However, it wasn’t meant to be, and as disappointing as that was, it seems to follow an interesting pattern.

We as bloggers spend our time writing our posts, hoping to drive visitors to our sites to read what we have to say and see what we have to show. Some of us hope to make a dollar or two here and there, if not necessarily through the blog itself, then by doing speaking engagements, workshops and the like, or having someone see what we write about and decide to pay us for it. However, to get all of that, it takes influence, because that’s what’s going to determine just how many people are going to come see what it is you do.

What I’ve noticed is that I’m more influential outside of my home area than within it. Though I’ve lived in this area for 35 years, I find that I’m kind of the great unknown. Now, a part of that is my fault because I don’t get out all that much anymore, and in the days when I did get out, there was no internet. It’s hard becoming a local cause célèbre, if you will, at age 50. Indeed, the local net community in general probably didn’t even know I existed until I went to my first tweetup last year. Oh, I had a local client here and there, but all because I participated in this consulting group; any local work I’ve done has come through them.

Just to spread this even further, most of my consulting assignments in my main profession have also been out of town. Do local facilities need the types of services I provide as much as out of town facilities? Yes. Do they even look at me? No, I’m pretty much ignored, even at health care networking meetings (I finally decided to drop out after being a member for 15 years), though I do still market to them from time to time. Not memorable enough? Me?!?!?

Back on the 22nd, I did my first workshop on social media marketing in central New York. It’s actually the first time I’ve given a presentation in this area that I’ve been paid for, and I’ve given enough presentations. Goodness, I’ve been in the local newspaper, local business newspaper, once on local radio (I don’t count seeing myself in the background on the local news, though I did laugh), and it seems no one really knows who I am around here; that’s a shame.

Of course, I kind of see it as my fault. One of the things about social media marketing is that when you do it, unless you’ve finitely targeted yourself to your local area, your message tends to spread everywhere, and let’s face the fact that there’s a lot more people “everywhere” than at home. The most consistent comments I get on this blog or any of my other blogs come from people “elsewhere”. The people who have bought products I’ve created are from “elsewhere” (well, I did have one guy I knew who bought one of my products, but he’s the only one). Any web work that didn’t come from my consulting group, or writing work, that I’ve gotten have come from “elsewhere”. Goodness, the article I wrote about one of our tweetups, where I mentioned about 30 names, only got 2 comments, luckily from local people, though I know a few more did see it at least.

Ah, I know what you’re asking; what about the topic about influence online? In that fashion, we at least have some tools we can look at. For instance, I’m sitting at an Alexa rank of 112,591 for this blog. My main business site is around 392,000, my other site is around 1.3 million. For my main search terms on my main business, I come up in the top ten, if not at #1. For my other business, I’m in the top 40 for half of the terms, but if Yahoo was the main search engine I could actually claim a bunch of top 10 slots; I’m going to figure that out one day. For my main business site, it’s linked to more than 3,000 other websites, and my other business site almost 3,000; for this blog, more than 14,000 links elsewhere. As a point of comparison, I popped in some other domain names, and I don’t see anyone else linked to that many sites that I know.

So, in a weird way, it begs the question what is influence anyway, and how does one use it? I think I’ll tackle that one next week. But I’ll ask this question again; how influential are you online?

Ultimate World War II DVD Collection

Ultimate World War II DVD Collection

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First Social Media Marketing Goal

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Two weeks ago I wrote two posts on social media marketing. The first was titled Do You Have A Social Media Strategy?. The second was called Goals For A Social Media Strategy. I was attempting to start a general conversation on the topics because I kind of had an ulterior motive planned. Some of you (Scott, Dennis) wanted more specifics on those goals; I didn’t want to give them up. Now I can talk about it a bit more.

On July 22nd, in Cortland NY, I’m going to be a big part of a workshop on social media marketing. Okay, truthfully I’m doing most of it, but my friend Renée Scherer of Presentations Plus is going to be doing a part of it as well. The topic is titled Make A Splash With Social Media Marketing For Business. This is a 6-hour presentation that will talk about social media strategies, mention special social media outlets and actually help people set things up as need be. We’re also doing the same presentation on August 19th, but I really want July to be successful.

We’re charging $149 for members of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and $169 for everyone else. That’s because the venue sponsoring us is Greek Peak Mountain Resort, a new member of the Chamber (for those who are local I know they’re not in Liverpool, but I don’t ask questions lol) who’s promoting their new attraction, Cascades Indoor Water Park. And if you think that’s a high price, Renée got a flyer in the mail last week for a similar presentation being given in Hawaii for $475 for the same time frame; this is a steal! And there’s a special price which makes it inviting to turn it into an all day thing with the family; coupons if you will. Here’s the flyer to download if you’d like to check it out.

The thing is I wasn’t initially a part of this event. I was asked if I would take over for someone else, and there were some circumstances that I wanted taken care of before I consented. Those have been taken care of, so now I’m a part of this thing. And I have a lot of work to do; I’ve already started on the initial outline, but this is at least 5 hours of talking, presenting, and hands on teaching, so it’s more than the traditional presentation for me.

Now, something I mentioned to my friend Scott is that I don’t believe all goals have to have a time frame on them, and I stick by that. He is correct that most trainers will say you must have a date on it, otherwise it won’t have a chance to be fulfilled. How many of you have lost the amount of weight you said you were going to lose by the date you set? I thought so. How many of you have lost at least some weight by the date you set? I’m betting that’s a different number, and that’s kind of my point. Sometimes the effort towards the goal is more important than the date on the goal; at least that’s how I’m dealing with this thing with my health club, as I’ve yet to lose any weight but have lost some inches.

Anyway, now I can reveal the goal that I really had, which is to have at least 50 people at this event in July. Actually, some of the things we’ve tried have already been put into motion, but I’ll talk about mine, since I’m going to be trying it the social media way. Once a week for the next 2 weeks I’ll be having a post on the event on this blog; that might mean two blog posts in a day, or it might be the only post on that day. In the last 10 days I’ll be throwing a blurb on here as well, and one of the posts will be a sticky post, which means visitors to the blog that come in through the mail page will see it at the top for those 10 days. I’ll also be writing about it on my business blog; I’m not sure I’ll be writing about it more than once on my finance blog, since the topics aren’t quite compatible.

I’ve already started talking about it on LinkedIn, albeit kind of discreetly. I’ve had 3 people contact me asking me to keep them in the loop when I knew more; that’s not a bad start, and now that I can be more free, I’m going for it. How am I going to do it? I’m going to use the 120 character box on the main page to mention it and link to it, and I’ll be throwing out something in some of the local LinkedIn groups I’m a part of. In the last few weeks my connections have grown, and now I’m sitting at around 235 people; that’s not so bad.

It will become a part of my Twitter marketing. Of course the messages will go out when the blogs post, since those messages go out automatically, but I’ll be wording the campaign differently when I mention it separately. The thing about Twitter is that you can miss a lot of people if you only post something once a day, since the stream moves fast. Lucky for me, I talk about so many other things, as well as talk to people in general, that hopefully it won’t be seen as spamming the masses too much. Oh yeah, there’s also a Tweetup on the 30th that I’m going to, and I’ll be talking about it there as well. It’s an offshoot of social media marketing, so it counts; my rules. And y’all can look to the right there to see how many folks I have following me there.

As for Facebook, first I hope more of you join my Facebook business page, for which the widget is there to the right, or you can click on this FB business link. I’m going to mention it in that group, and of course I’ll create an event link to market it as well. I have almost 450 friends there, but of course I’m only going to send a specific link to those people who are local. I’m also a part of a couple of local groups there as well, so you can bet they’ll hear about it.

Both Renée and I will be doing an email marketing campaign as well, as it’s part of social media marketing, old school as it were. We’ll be getting some help with that one via the Liverpool Chamber; ah, finally something that my paying a membership for is providing me. 🙂 Renée will be using Constant Contact, and she’ll be presenting that since I know nothing about it except I market it as an affiliate.

One final thing we might be doing concerns the webinar we gave last year. I want to talk about YouTube in a bit more detail, so our plan is to take a piece out of that webinar we market and have a short video from it made so we can then create a YouTube page to put it on. I’m not sure how well that will be received, but it’s the next step in my overall social media marketing strategy, so I might as well get a jump on learning how to use it, right?

Anyway, time to end this one. As you can see, it’s an audacious goal, but we’re going to push this one hard. We have verbal commitments; now all we have to do is turn those verbals into actual paying customers. And now you know the rest of the story; thanks Paul Harvey. Stay tuned; at some point after the event I might let you know how successful we were. Oh yeah; future emails will be much shorter. 😀

Paul Harvey’s America

Blogging

Charging For Advertising

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In my last post I talked about how, suddenly it seems that my word is gold in some fashion, at least for my other two blogs anyway. Well, what’s also now happening is that I’m getting a lot of requests to put some kind of advertising on the main page of my finance blog, Top Finance Blog. This has presented somewhat of a conundrum, so I thought I’d express my thoughts in public here, in case someone wanted to jump in and offer alternative advice. You might have to take a quick look over there to offer advice on this.

First, I’m now hesitant to allow any text advertising on the blog. It’s not because I had it on this blog and it lost its page rank. It’s mainly because even back then on this blog it seemed out of place. I mean, I have other text links, but they’re associated with the blog itself or my own businesses. I consider a blogroll as being associated with the blog. The text link, though; I personally can’t figure out how it fits into the scheme of things, and I don’t want to go that route at all.

That means, second (I always figure there should be a “second” if there’s a “first”), the only thing left is a banner ad of some type. I don’t have a problem with a banner ad, because those I already have on the blog. I’m telling everyone that the largest it can be is 200×200, since that fits a side panel; I don’t see myself popping anyone else’s 468×68 banner ad into any of those posts, and I’m only running that type of ad at the top of each individual post through Commission Junction.

What I’ve been offering is to run banner ads at $10 a month. One guy said it was too high, others haven’t commented yet. I don’t think it’s too high at all; matter of fact, I’m wondering if it’s kind of low. I’ve also said the banner ads would be nofollow; I don’t think they like that either, but that’s my prerogative, right?

At the same time, though I’ve made the offer, I’d also have to figure out where I’d put it. Too high and it messes up the seemingly balanced site if people go from the main page to one of the articles. Too low and the advertiser might feel like they’re not getting their money’s worth, no matter what I charge.

Also, there’s the thing about relevance and location. I have a lot of UK companies wanting to advertise on the site, but I’ve stuck with American only. My thought is that most of my readers of that blog are from the United States, and I don’t want to intentionally be sending them to the UK for something they might want, then find out they can’t use it here. And relevance to finance is important as well; I’ve outright turned down products such as medical equipment because it’s not a medical blog of any sort, even if I do comment on medical finances and, of course, health care reform.

What are your thoughts on this issue? Am I being too tough or too lenient, and would you care about text ads, relevance, or location?

Desert Biodome

Business

Why I Created A Facebook Fan Page

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After over a year of thinking about it, I finally created my first Facebook fan page. Actually, officially Facebook has moved away from the term “fan” and just calls is a Facebook page. I like that also because thinking about having people become “fans” of mine, rather asking them to do it, just seemed so narcissistic; definitely not normally my style. Anyway, it’s under the name of my business site, so if you’re on Facebook and would like to take a look, check out T. T. Mitchell Consulting, Inc, which is my main business name.

Why did I create this page? After all, I’ve had to think about it for so long that you’d think anything I had to basically convince myself to do that I probably would walk away from it. That’s my normal pattern, for sure.

Truthfully, it was an impulse decision. There was some research and thought over all this time, and the truth is that I’m now looking to push all aspects of my business just a bit further than I already have. After all, with my other site, I talk about helping businesses find ways to maximize their online presence. Turns out that, for SEO purposes, creating a page to link to your business is more effective than creating a group page. I don’t know why, but there’s some history out there, so it makes some sense. Kind of like some folks and Squidoo pages.

However, Squidoo just doesn’t work for me personally; can’t really say why. I wasn’t sure Facebook would work for me either, but I have more than 300 friends there, or do I believe, and that’s more than I would have on Squidoo.

I also know you’re probably remembering what I had to say about Facebook group pages, but since the focus is much different, and what I’ll be doing is much different, I don’t really need participation on that page as much as people just seeing what’s going on with me.

What do you do? You go to a page like this, where it tells you what you’ll be getting, kind of, and then there’s a link that says “create a page.” You click that, and follow the instructions, which is to answer a few questions, and you’re on your way.

Okay, that’s not quite it. I wasn’t sure what to do with my page once it was first created because unlike a group, you can’t just start writing all sorts of stuff in free form. Groups aren’t supposed to be for advertising purposes anyway, and since pages are, they’re trying to keep you in some kind of format. What did I do? I contacted one of my friends, Shirley Frazier of Solo Business Marketing, for some assistance.

Basically, what she said was to add all my business and product links to the page so people would know what to follow and look at if they came to the page. Also, you can write something on your wall, and I also wrote a message in the discussion area. I’ve told people they can write comments, ask questions in the discussion area, and I’ll answer whatever I can. I added all my business links, which consisted of three websites and 3 blogs. I have other sites, but I’m not considering any of those business related, per se, so I won’t be adding those. I added a link to my newsletter page and my books and CD, and samples of my articles.

Then, instead of doing a blast out to all my friends, which just didn’t feel right for me to do, I wrote on my status wall that I’d created it and asked people to take a look. Yeah, I know, I get tons of page suggestions all the time, but I just didn’t want to do that back to anyone. My friend Kelvin says I’m not thinking like a business marketer, since I am talking about my business, and he’s probably right, but so be it. I’m writing about it here, I put it on Twitter, and I’ll put it on LinkedIn, and I think that’ll be enough.

Anyway, I hope you check it out, if you’re on Facebook; thanks.