Tag Archives: products

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.

Personal

What Do We Expect For Free?

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A few days ago I saw a comment on another blog’s posting that made me start thinking about this concept of the word “free”.

It was a fairly innocuous comment stating to the writer of the blog that he would have liked to see a little bit more information on some of what she was sharing with all of us to get her insight as to why she was recommending some things that she was recommending. I wrote back that I thought she was giving us a lot already and that I was at least happy for all the time that she was putting into giving us what she was giving us.

However, it got me thinking about it just a bit more because I realized that there are times when I am like everybody else in expecting a little bit more than what I’m getting from something even if it happens to be free. There were a few people who made comments on a review post I wrote on Six Figure Blogger Blueprint wishing that the author had given us a little bit more detail on how to specifically do something, and I remember thinking at the time “hey, it’s free, what do we want?” And yet, when I think about it, there are a lot of things that I get for free online that I’ll write about.

For instance, I’m running a WordPress blog. There are times when I’m complaining about something, such as those constant updates that seem to irritate most of us, and every once in a while I remember that this is a free program. There are a couple of other things I’ve written about that I absolutely hate, such as Disqus, Intense Debate and Blogger, but when you think about it those things are free also. Of course, I’ve chosen not to use any of those things, and instead pay for my hosting and my blog, and don’t filter my comments using either of those other two things I mentioned or anything else, but it’s not much different than just openly complaining about something that’s free.

What should we really expect from “free”? Should we expect that everything we get for free give us full details as if we were paying for it? I’m thinking that’s what blogs are for, because there are a lot of us who give a lot of information out to people absolutely free. I think I’ve done some tutorials on this blog and one of my other blogs on how to do things step by step, and yet I don’t get paid for any of those things. I don’t mind that because it’s a blog after all, and I like sharing information whenever I can. At the same time, you notice over there on the left that I have three things that I’ve created, and each one of them also has some step-by-step information that I am expecting someone to pay for if they want that information.

Here’s the thing about “free”. “Free” still takes a lot of time to create. Whereas I can write a blog post usually in less than five minutes, there are people who take upwards of an hour or more to put together a blog post. How many of you have actually written a book? How many of you have actually written a report of some kind outside of school work? These things do take time to put together, especially if someone is trying to do a good job. If they do it like I do anything, they probably start off with an outline, then a brief sketch as to what each outline point is supposed to contain, then they write or create the thing, then they edit the thing, then they might take the time to pretty it up somewhat before it’s ready for delivery. I’m bad when it comes to the “pretty up” part, but I’m not so bad at the rest of it.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to have some kind of expectation that what we are either going to use or read at least in some fashion addresses the topic we’re hoping it does. Getting something free and finding out it has nothing to do with what it said it did is diversionary and sneaky, and that’s not right. But for everything else, I think we have the right to try it out, and if it works for us or we can get something out of it then great. If we can’t get anything out of it or it doesn’t work right, then at least it didn’t cost us anything and we should probably be happy for that. It doesn’t mean that something free can’t be criticized, but it does mean that the level of criticism should match how much it cost us.

It’s just something I’ve been thinking about over the past few days as I remembered something I had written a while back ago asking the question How Do You Value. How do we decide when something we get for free is valuable even if it doesn’t give us everything we want?

Internet, Marketing

Pot Odds In Internet Marketing

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Many of you know how much I love going to play poker. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it because I love the camaraderie that eventually is created by spending just a few hours with a bunch of people you’ve never met before, commiserating with everyone else who’s either won a big hand or gotten beaten in a big hand. We’ve all been there, and we all have stories to share.

One thing I like to believe I’m good at is figuring out what the odds are that my hand is good or not. Of course, having a good hand doesn’t always mean it’s a winning hand, but more often than not it works out just fine. What I’m not good at is figuring out the numbers, as in what the actual percentage is that favors my hand.

I was reading a blog post called Easiest Way To Understand Math In Poker, where the writer, named Mitchell Cogart (knew I liked him for some reason) was giving some formulas for how to calculate it fairly quickly. It’s still somewhat beyond me, mainly because it takes time to do those calculations, and unless I was playing in a tournament, I don’t like taking that kind of time figuring out anything.

However, it’s the other thing he was talking about that starts to get me into the point of this post. There’s something called pot odds that, to poker players, is very important and very intriguing. In essence, it’s figuring out how much the pot is worth to you in odds versus the odds of you having a winning hand. Just to throw out numbers, if you only have a 30% chance of winning a hand, but the dollars in the pot come out to you having a 55% chance of winning the pot, many poker players will take a chance on the money rather than their hand because they perceive the dollars are so high that you can’t afford NOT to play the hand.

I hear this on poker commentary sometimes on TV. The guy will say “there’s so much money in the pot that so-and-so absolutely has to call the hand, even though he’s going to lose.” On TV, you always know what the players hands are, so you know who’s going to win or lose. But the players don’t know that, so you see them taking time, running through all the calculations in their minds, and then they’ll pull the trigger on hands that most of us would say we know better than to play because we have no idea on how to calculate pot odds.

In a way, you can relate that to trying to learn more about internet marketing. There are a lot of products out there that will teach you something about it. Some are very good and some aren’t all that good. However, what most of us believe is that the more expensive something is, the more we should be getting out of it. Truthfully, that may or may not be true. The “pot odds” are in your favor; after all, why would someone put a $500 product out there that wasn’t going to deliver on what’s been promised, right?

Here’s the thing. Just like everything else in life, nothing works for everyone. It’s possible that the $500 product might tell you everything you need to know to make money, or it may not. It may tell you things to do that your morality won’t allow you to do. For instance, if it said that in order to make lots of money you have to kill a lot of puppies, would you do it? If it said that you had to do what’s known as black hat principles, would you do it?

While I was at my mother’s house on Friday, she was watching this network that was advertising a program called Kell On Earth, about this fashion designer who’s very successful. However, she’s a terror; there’s no way I’d ever want to deal with that type of person on a yearly basis, let alone a daily basis. She berates her employees and other people around her, but justifies it by saying she has to do what she has to do to stay at the top. I’m sorry, but if you have to treat people as if they’re inferior to you then I don’t want to be successful. It’s not my style, and I couldn’t live with myself. Yet there are thousands of people who subscribe to that and believe it’s the way to go. Notice how some are successful, but others aren’t? Once again, no one size fits all.

Some folks thought I was being too lenient when I reviewed Six Figure Blogger Blueprint. The thing is, the book wasn’t really for those of you who have been doing this for awhile. It was also free, not a full course on internet marketing. It got me thinking about things, and any book that does that for me works for me. We all judge things differently. We have to know ourselves, and what we might respond to. Like that book to the right side there, 20 Ways To Make $100 A Day Online. I bought that book, and I think it was perfect for me because I was able to take just one of its principles and turn it into a way to make money. It wasn’t overly expensive, but turned out to be just what I needed. I calculated my odds for finding something I thought I could use, and I turned out to be right.

How do you determine whether something might work well for you or not? Do you even try anymore? I say that at the risk of jumping into Sire’s response, because I know he’s said more than once that he won’t pay for anything anymore, after being burned many times early on. Has that happened to some of you as well? I’d really like to know.

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Product

2009’s Top Inventions

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Time Magazine has come out with a list of the Top 50 Inventions of 2009. I’ve taken a look at the list and feel totally lost. Most of these things I’ve never heard of, and as I like to consider myself a news and science junkie, this is quite disappointing. Let’s see which ones I’ve at least heard of, if not personally used.

I’m not a gamer, but I have heard of controller free gaming, where the body is the control and everything reacts based on body movements. That sounds intriguing, but I’ve yet to see it in practice.

I’ve heard that there’s a new Aids vaccine, but it comes along the lines of every other vaccine that still hasn’t had much done with it. Why it’s on the list, I have no idea.

Vertical farming is a very interesting concept, one that’s not really an invention in 2009, but has started coming out as a viable option in farming. In essence, it’s farming in buildings rather than on the land. One builds tall buildings where some of the layers have dirt and crops. You could build these in large cities, which would cut down on the cost of importing certain items into the city, and potentially be able to feed the entire city from within. The problems right now are having enough electricity to handle it on a large scale and of course having enough water But the concept is a fantastic one.

The 3-D camera is the last thing on the list that I’ve heard of. Instead of one lens, it has two, trying to simulate how life views things to try to give a more realistic image. The problem is that, to see it in 3-D, you have to have a special viewer, otherwise it looks just like any other image. Not necessarily Harry Potter stuff, but it’s an interesting concept.

Isn’t that a shame? Out of 50 items I’ve only heard of four of them, and only one of them do I know anything significant about; ouch. Is this a sign of age, or is this a sign of everything else being so cutting edge that there’s no reason I should know about them? I’m sure you’ll let me know, and I’m betting those closer to my age will give answers closer to mine, if they’re honest. lol

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Advertisement, Marketing

Creating Your Own Products; Let Me Talk About Mine

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Something you hear many of the internet marketing gurus talking about is creating your own products, especially information products. Supposedly there’s this big market for almost anything that’s intellectual property, and big money can be made from these things.

Well, I’m about to somewhat challenge that view by talking about my own products that I’ve created. Some I’ve talked about here, while I haven’t talked about the others. So, I’m going to do that here, with links to where I might have talked about a product before, and then talk about the other things I have. Of course, within those other links is a link to my product.

First, for this crowd, is my book Using Your Website As A Marketing Tool, which is up there at the top left of this blog. Do you know how many people have actually visited the book from this blog? Four ever; period. That’s it. Now, to be slightly fair, the last time I actually promoted the book in full was in August, but come on, only four people ever, with all the visitors I have coming to this blog? All the people who say they’re interested in making money, all the people who have businesses with lousy websites, and I could only drive four people to that site? That’s pretty pathetic. What’s also pathetic is that for each of the times I’ve written about this book, I didn’t get a single comment on that post; I’m obviously a terrible marketer.

The second thing you see over there is for my webinar Social Media, SEO & Your Business in 90 Minutes. That post also didn’t get a single visit, and I’ve driven 3 people to check out the ad for the book from this blog. At least it’s newer than the other ebook, but still,… And, once again, no comment on this post, though I did get a couple of comments when I was talking about it before I actually did the webinar. Once again, created product, but lousy marketing I assume.

Next, look to the left there under the ad for 123Inkjets. This is my book Embrace The Lead, the one product I’m the most proud of. It was a labor of love, and I worked hard on completing it before my dad passed away. I was able to get 9 people from this blog to go look at it, but that’s not really great either. It has been my biggest selling product over the years, as I sell it in both electronic and soft cover form (I’ll even autograph a copy if asked). But I have to admit I’d have thought I’d make at least one sale from it off this blog, which has never happened. I have made a sale because of my Mitch’s Blog, which is my business blog, but not this one. And I’ve had two different squeeze pages for this book, but neither has generated all that much action ever, which is why it’s a muted looking page integrated into my business website format.

Below that is my CD series Keys To Leadership, and I’ve driven 7 people from this blog to check it out, even though it got some nice comments here. Seems people were more interested in what I had to say on the blog, which was a pretty funny story, than actually deciding it was worth taking the time to go see what the CDs were all about. You know, it makes me wonder just how many people actually even use the Listen button at the top of each blog post instead of having to read some of my longer posts. Okay, that was a sidebar thing; don’t answer it. Once again, it had one of those fancy squeeze pages that I later decided didn’t work, and integrated it back into my business website.

The last two products I haven’t really talked about here, but I will now. One is called the Mitchell Manager Training Program, and is a training program for new managers who want to gain some skills in things managers or supervisors need to know, but don’t have time for a lot of deep theory. It also has a portion that talks about stress and time management, as well as a brief lesson on budgeting. Sure, it’s still around 150 pages long, but I wrote it to be fairly easy to understand. Two weeks ago I made my first online sale, as it was only maybe 4 months ago I turned it into a digital product and began marketing it in that fashion. This one has never had a squeeze page; I’ve always marketed it basically through my business website. I haven’t put it on this blog because, frankly, I figured I’d be wasting my time. After all, it hasn’t lit a spark for any of my other products.

And finally, there’s my Mitchell Employee Evaluation Module, which has always been on its own squeeze page, though I’ve thought about pulling it back within the business site. It’s about 27 pages worth of information and sheets that will help managers evaluate their employees, as well as set up criteria to use in evaluating new employees. Once again, I’ve only made one digital sale of this product, and the buyer seemed to be happy with it. I knew this one would have no interest whatsoever on this site, which is why I haven’t marketed it here before now.

So, there’s six information products that I’ve created, and how are the sales? Lousy. How is my marketing? Obviously lousy. See, a big part of the piece says to try to find out what someone is interested in, then create something towards that interest. The other part of it is that, if you’re not interested in that, how the heck can you write about it? Some of these gurus aren’t interested and don’t care about stuff. They pay someone else to write it, someone else to help market it, and collect the profits. It works best when they’re already big names in selling something else; I doubt most of us could get away with that.

And why would we want to? What could be more dishonest than that? Matt Cutts was talking about that once with a website that advertised medical services that someone needed for their mother, but when asked for more information they couldn’t give it because the person knew nothing about the procedure; they had paid someone else to write it for them so they could put their name on it. How irritated would you be about something like that?

In any case, this post has a twofold purpose. One, to highlight all of the products I’ve created thus far; more are coming as I move along. And two, to show you that even creating your own products doesn’t guarantee success or interest. This doesn’t mean don’t create new things; it just means to temper your thoughts on how successful it might be once you put it out there.

Once again, there are no get rich quick schemes.



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