Clinton Skakun

Some bloggers are dead set against monetization. They think it taints their content and ruins trust with their readers. I’m no expert but beg to differ:

1. Put more valuable time in blogging, create better content. If you could replace your income blogging, or even just replace a few days a month with the cash you make from your blog, it would be fair to say you could spend more time writing valuable content(and less time working.) Lets say you spend 10 hours writing and drafting a blog post. How many people have that much time unless they don’t have to work?
2. Get you more serious about blogging. If you’ve been blogging long enough, you’ve probably had times when you wrote up a blog post and published it off, later regretting the sloppy errors you made. Monetization demands a little more attention. Would you read a blog, that asked for money, and had sloppy content?
3. It takes little effort, if you already have the traffic and the dedication. It’s really simple, just copy the strategy of someone else who has a successful blog(successful in terms of helpful content and makes money) and if it doesn’t work, try a new approach.

I’d love to hear your opinion!

“How to use News Releases, Blogs, Podcasting, Viral Marketing & Online Media to Reach Buyers Directly”

If there’s one online marketing book you want to read this year, it’s The New Rules of PR and Marketing. The New Rules are all about using social media to market your business. The book starts out explaining how mass marketing is good at advertising when you don’t need it and hides on you when you go looking for it. Social media is about providing the right information to the user at the right time, at right place. This is what makes social media so powerful. I believe you could take this book and use it as a handbook in implementing social media for your business.

David explains the different vehicles you can use in social media and who their for. David does a fantastic job of summarizing the tools available and also explains that you don’t have to use ALL of the tools or just ONE, you can use as many as you want and whatever you have time for, and whatever your focus can handle in order to be most effective. I’m pretty much sold on the idea of using News Releases, which is one of the most powerful tools for attracting journalists and getting better results out of your search engine optimization. Tools like Blogs, Podcasts, Viral Marketing, News Releases, Forums, Videos etc etc can be used to reach to buyers directly. David will also explain to you how to create content specifically to attract and interest your buyers.

The New Rules can be applied to your personal brand as well. I believe this material applies to anyone who “sells” something on the web, whether it be a product, an idea, a political campaign, education, informative content or a community. I highly recommend you read this book cover to cover, if you’re really serious about growing an online presence for your brand or business.

Photo Credit: PakistanHousing.pk

Gen-Y always has a lot to learn. And at times it seems they have a lot to prove, especially when it comes to any kind of business matters. It’s sad to say but the truth is the truth: whether we’re competent or not we’re still going to be viewed as “some young kid” or something or other. Experienced generations generally have more credibility, that’s that. This is a weakness that we can overcome with time and little conditioning. If we dress and act in a fashion that says “unprepared” or “incompetent” than maybe we deserve the doubt we receive from clients and business people. It’s no doubt that we need to be on our guard. The truth of the matter is that we can turn this weakness around and get creative and gain as much, if not more, credibility than our “elders”.

1. Have a flattering Online presence

Make sure you don’t have a bunch of crap about yourself on the web, at least what ever is in your influence. It’s pretty self explanatory, don’t post pictures of you chugging beer or going streaking. The only people that need to know this stuff is usually at the party with you, and wont miss it anyways. The rest of the world doesn’t really care, unless they’re your employer. Even if your boss has just as many parties as you, he probably doesn’t post it for the whole world to see.

If you’re an Online marketer or own an Online business and have a personal brand you already know more than I do on the subject.

2. Get lots of experience in your field and collect testimonials from prominent individuals you’ve served in the past.

If you work in an office, print a few of your best testimonials and frame them and hang them on the wall. This will catch a client’s eye when they’re meeting with you in your office. This right out says, “this guy isn’t fooling around, he’s doing great things and people cared enough to say these kind things about him.” Put it on your web site or blog as well. Another good idea would be to put a short testimonial on the back of your business card. This should be one of your best testimonials, with the name of an important or well known individual.

The best way to attain testimonials is simply by asking. Most people don’t offer to write you a testimonial, even if your service was amazing. Don’t be afraid to ask, people are usually more than happy to put in a good for you. AND if you can, write it yourself. It saves the client time and it ensures that you have a well formed testimonial that sounds colorful and convincing. Some people really suck at compliments. Statements like “You did a lot for us, and the service was good.” is not as good as “We are delighted with the service your provided us with and how you went the extra mile to take care of our challenges and to find us with the perfect home. It was a joy to work you and your establishment.” You want to have a fresh batch of testimonials twice a year, so you don’t end up looking like a “has been” who’s been taking a hit from the down economy and all that. Make sure you get the idea across that you’re serving lots of people and that they took the time to say something nice about you.

3. Publish content and material

There are countless types of content you could create. Online media have given us the opportunity to be creative and get away with not pay more than a few dollars to get it out. There’s podcasts, blogs, newsletters, news releases, forums, networking sites, video sites, ebooks and white papers etc etc etc. But the web isn’t where it stops. If you feel your content is worth getting out, publish a book or release audio CDs or teaching DVDs. You have all kinds of choices, some cost a little more than others. If you play your cards right it could be well worth your time and money. Just avoid publishing fluff, vague or ambiguous information that people don’t fully understand how to apply. In the publishing world there’s a saying, “you are what you publish.”

Also, posting photos of you and well known individuals is a great way to show that you’re out and about and meeting some big names.

4. Speak at events and/or start your own teaching seminars.

Speaking is a great opportunity to get in front of people and get feedback from a live audience. Not only is it a great way to challenge yourself to improve your communication skills and teaching skills but it also gives you a chance to promote products and point people to your newsletter or Web site. You can also record these teaching sessions and seminars and sell them or put them on the web.

5. Be yourself but be professional

You need to have the whole bit. How do you dress? Do you have a business card? Can you explain to us what you do for a living, in a way that markets yourself? Are you introverted or extroverted? Do you carry yourself with confidence or show intimidation? Do you sound like a gutter-mouth or do you use certain words when needed to emphasize a point? Are you always carrying what happened at home or what happened in traffic with you where ever you go, to tell the whole the world? Are you calm and reserved or jumpy, desperate and reactive? Are you empathetic with people and their concerns or do you ignore them? Do you go the extra mile to make absolutely sure a concern is taken care of? Do you run people down, nit pick and blame co-workers? What snap judgments and assumptions are people going to make within 30 seconds of meeting you? Are your words in sync with your body language or do you tell a lie to someone’s face and admit it in your body language? Can you communicate? Are you always enthusiastic and friendly? Do you use the right words or constantly trigger negative emotions? Do you like the people you’re around? Do you like your clients?

6. Have a catching personality

I am totally convinced that, in the world of business, people skills completely outweigh technical skills any day of the week. You don’t need to memorize every little technical term to be great at what you do. Personally, my greatest weakness in the past has been not being able to fully communicate with people and understand what they really want. I always worked hard to perfect my coding skills, which is not a bad thing, but in the process I completely neglected my people handling skills. Which made me feel inadequate in my ability to “get work”. Being able to establish rapport, influence people, ask the right questions etc etc is crucial in being in business. If you want to be that mad scientist who sits in a back room crunching numbers, you might not need people skills. But this doesn’t completely enable you to rise above your current position.

7. Have awards and achievements to talk of

This might be a given. If you have accomplished one or two things in your lifetime people are going to be more willing to listen to you. People who have won awards have usually taken extraordinary efforts to get there. Being an “award winning” individual means commitment and builds trust.

Photo credit by Matt Hamm

What does the coming year hold for social media and what changes can we anticipate in 2010?

I’ve been doing some studying this morning and made a few good notes taken from some well respected authorities on Web 2.0. People like David Armano, who’s blog I ran into a little over a year ago, and ultimately by reading his blog, I became intrigued in social media and started seeing the possibilities of what I could use it for. Another great authority is, Manager, Executive and Internal Communications at Cisco Systems and owner of Socialized, Joel Postman. In his post, Five Social Media Predictions for 2010, Joel says “Social Search Will Shake Out, and the Search Metaphor Will Change”, saying that traditional search will become less and less popular. Instead of going to separate sites like google.com or bing.com we’ll get search results based on the context of what we’re doing, making search much more targeted and all around more convenient. At the same time this may put Google Search in the dust, not any time soon mind you, but Google Search may lessen in popularity as new search technologies becomes more and more popular.

Here are a few other interesting social media predictions for 2010 I picked up:

• South East Asia and India, New Web Hotspot According to Ron Callari the next billion people to adopt the web will be mostly from South East Asia and India
• Location based Social Networks grow in popularity With the use of mobile and GPS etc location based social networks will grow in popularity in 2010. Experts say that this wont be just a social network thing, but rather a new layer of the web.
• Companies Will Develop Social Media Policies With companies trying out social media and both banning it during working hours, companies will develop policies to set guidelines of how social media will be used.
• More Web Attacks With the growing popularity of social networks, frequency of web attacks may increase.
• Enterprise software will be used more and more Businesses are starting to see the value in using the web, enterprise software will become ever popular.
• Social media as a/part of a cost effective strategy Corporations(big and small) will look to cut costs and scale by using social media.
• Mobile will be increasingly popular Mobile web increases in popularity as companies ban working hour usage of social networking and Online media.
• Search will evolve into possibly a new species Joel Postman says “Search will shake out and the search metaphor will change” and goes on to explain that “Instead of going to a site like google.com or bing.com users will receive meaningful, personally relevant search results within the context of what they’re doing.”
• “Boring” Social Media names may return Are the days of names like “Twitter”, “Bing”, “Digg” and “Bit.ly” slowly coming to an end? Rachel Winchester predicts that “boring business names will come back as more staid elements, such as government, will become more serious about adopting social media.”

These are a few of the hot ones I picked up from a few sources on the web. I’d be interested in what you think the future holds for the web and social media. Please leave a comment