Tag Archives: publicity

Personal

Some Random Sunday Things

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I’ve been on quite a clip lately in writing this blog, my other blogs, other people’s blogs and all the articles I’ve been writing as well. I could have taken today off, and I kind of am because this is a quick hitter to mention a few things that have entertained or mentioned me lately.

The first is another online radio interview I did with Beverly Mahone of Boomer Diva Nation, the same group that named me as one of the top Baby Boomer Men of 2010. I thank her for that, and I hope to be able to live up to it for the year. Here’s the interview, which you can download as a MP3.

The second is both an honor and some confusion, I guess. I was listed on Not A Pro Blog by Jordan Cooper as one of the 20 Bloggers To Watch Out For In A Back Alley (at least I was; seems the actual Problogger bought this particular blog in April 2010, so the rest of this paragraph makes little sense, but I’m leaving it here anyway).

There’s a video that picks on 20 of us guys, but when he gets to me he compares me to Magilla Gorilla. I missed the reference, my wife isn’t happy for some reason (probably that “equating a black man with a gorilla thing), but I like that I got a mention anyway. I’d have commented on his blog but he has Disqus, and you know how I feel about that, so I figure he’ll see the trackback. His blog is pretty good, and I subscribe to it, so go ahead and check it out.

The third is just a bit of funny that I saw that I wanted to pop up here, though I’m not sure I’m really allowed to do. If I’m contacted, I’ll take it back down, but I’ll get a bit of fun out of it first. This is how you take someone’s power away when they don’t really have it to begin with. I wish I could have thought of saying stuff like this back to people when I was a kid; now I don’t have to deal with such things. I bring you Get Fuzzy:

Finally, some quick football picks. I’m obviously not the best guy at picking games, but I’ll have my fun with it anyway. In the AFC, I expect Indianapolis to win big, but I’m pulling for the NY Jets. They have to be the emotional pick in this game, and all week we’ve been evoking the memories of Broadway Joe here in NY state. In the NFC, man, I really don’t care since my Cowboys lost, but since I have to make a pick I’m going with New Orleans, though for no particular reason.

Indianapolis versus Minnesota would have way more back stories to tell, and the networks would love the Manning vs. Favre comparisons, and of course that game would easily draw in more visitors and make more money than a Jets versus Saints Super Bowl, but most of the world will watch no matter who’s playing, and I’ll have a legitimate betting interest in the game then (Scott, get ready!). By the way, the Jets prove why you play these games rather than just anoint the teams that should be there. No one saw the Jets making it this far with a rookie QB and new coach; fantastic stuff.

That’s it; a “short post” that ended up being more than 500 words anyway. Enjoy your Sunday y’all!

Interview

How Can You Prosper Through Publicity?

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Talk about an interesting issue, at least to me.

This year I’ve probably been a part of more interviews than ever before. Some have been online live interviews. Some have been in magazines. Some have been articles I’ve written. No matter; I’ve been out there, working things as I had hoped I could.

However, when all is said and done, I’ve gotten some publicity, but haven’t figured out how to fully capitalize on it. That’s not quite true; I haven’t figured out how to capitalize on any of it. I think that’s a major issue, as I’ve been getting publicity for years and haven’t yet capitalized on it.

Part of my problem is that I haven’t fully directed myself into one arena, which makes it hard for people to figure out just what it is I do. One wouldn’t think it would matter, but it probably does. My health care crowd has no idea what social media is, just as most of you who visit this blog have no idea what a revenue cycle consultant does. Throw in leadership and SEO and some other things and one might consider themselves as being renaissance, but others might not have a clue what to think.

Even with all of that, I think it’s been interesting over all this time to learn that publicity on its own doesn’t mean anything. Yeah, you get a minute or two of a bounce from some quarters. A newspaper article I was in back in May is on the wall of one of my favorite breakfast restaurants, which is very nice. I also got a free meal out of it at a local steakhouse; loved that as well. But business; none.

In any case, this was a pretty good year, and I’d like to share the links to some of the things I did this year as far as interviews or publicity went, since some of what I did isn’t producible. I wonder how most of you would have found a way to use any of these things to generate new income; I’d love to hear your thoughts.

My most recent magazine interview, though my participation is short, in Oswego County Magazine.

A radio interview I did on a subject called Men Have Issues Too.

A radio interview I did on the subject of Reinventing Yourself.

This is only a link to my business blog talking about my first national podcast on a diversity topic, Celebrating Differences.

An interview I did that ended up on a blog called Ramama’s Musings, where I talked a lot about dealing with diabetes.

A radio interview I did on the subject of blogging.

A radio interview I did on the subjects of social media and SEO.

A newspaper interview with my picture (in my red room) on Staying Positive.

An interview I did with Murray Newlands on affiliate marketing and business in general.

A health care interview I was a part of on Persuasive Compassion.

Finally, I’m listed as one of the top Baby Boomer Men of 2010 by Boomer Diva Nation.

So, did I put myself out there enough in 2009? Nope; I need to do even better in 2010!

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Social Media

Are You Using Social Media For Promotion?

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This is the first of a two part series on social media. The first article is asking if you’re using social media to promote yourself, whatever that “self” is supposed to be. The second article will be asking how are you doing it, and it’ll be more than just asking which sites you’re going to. Of course I’ll be telling some of my stuff also, but with the opening, I now give myself a place to do an internal link once I’ve written both posts. Method to the madness; and so we begin.

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By now, everyone should know what I mean by social media, but I’m not going to take any chances. Social media is where people have the opportunity to interact with each other within a controlled environment of some type. Actually, back in the day, we used bulletin board systems to talk to each other, and in many ways that was the earliest bit of social media out there. Then we had early chat rooms, and Usenet, which was a lot of fun initially.

The problems were interesting back then. You could only spend 30 minutes to an hour on bulletin board systems before you got kicked off. Chat rooms weren’t close to being private, and one night I tried talking to over 30 people at the same time for almost 2 hours; never did that again. Usenet was interesting, but sometimes it took too long, got strangely heated, you’d see posts in multiple groups, and eventually it got taken over by pornographers and spammers.

Today’s social media seems to be more social, strange at that sounds. Instant messaging is more personal. Websites such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Ryze can be more personal, with options of being more participatory. Second Life actually allows you to be something else entirely different. And Twitter is instantaneous gratification if you want it, and that actually works best if you care to build up relationships. To a degree, blogging in today’s world is also a form of social media, because fewer people are using blogs as diaries, instead either talking about issues, points of views, or selling something such as products or their business knowledge. And of course there are forums I also belong to.

I participate in all of the above except Second Life. There were other sites I had joined, but none of them really did anything for me. Even Ryze isn’t doing much for me these days, as I’ve cut back from my high ever of 11 groups to only one. However, the other sites are doing some interesting things for me, as long as I’m participating in some of the processes that I’m being afforded.

Now, can I say I’ve made any money from any of them just yet? Not definitely, that’s for sure. Well, I’ve made a little bit from blogging, so I do have to throw that in there. I got a speaking engagement once because of my business blog. Two of my blogs have generated a little bit of Adsense money, and this blog actually got a sale of a CJ product once. And I negotiated a writing assignment with a couple of people through IM (instant messaging for the uninitiated), which means I made money there also. And Digital Point forum has garnered me a few clients that I still have as far as writing goes.

As for promotion, Twitter has gotten me quite a few interviews. Both my business blog and this one got me other interviews. Though this blog lost its PR (page rank), it’s still looking pretty good on Alexa, though I still want to crack that 100,000 number one of these days. I mentioned all those followers on Twitter, and I’ve talked to many of those people, including Guy Kawasaki, whose book I helped edit, then got a signed copy of.

And I continue to try to figure out more ways I can use these different social media opportunities. So, I ask once more; are you using social media for promotion?