If You Don't Have a Blog Yet, Read This …

So Pam Slim, who has been my excellent co-coach in my Extraordinary Business Builder's Club, recently had another media win the other day.

We were chatting online when she let it slip that the Wall St. Journal Online PR folks sent her a message asking to share something with her readers.

"How flipped is our traditional media/blogging relationship becoming?" she wrote.

Well, pretty dang flipped, I'd say. In fact, just on the power of Pam's blog, she recently was recognized at a book signing for marketing superstar Seth Godin. Seth, himself, recognized her name when she went to have him sign her book. 'Pam Slim?" he remarked. "You're famous!"

How sweet is that? And all, I say, through the power of a well-branded, well written blog.

Follow Up on Sandra's Story

Correct what I just wrote yesterday … Sandra DOES have her blog up. This gal doesn't fool around, even fresh out of major surgery.

Just because Sandra Ghalinger is not only a courageous survivor but smart, too, she got her blog up in NO TIME. Here's what she's posted on her new site: 'Tittyology"…. It's still bare bones and there are pieces missing, by this is great stuff. I'm already sucked in.

The Power of an Original Idea

OK, so you know how I'm always harping about how you have to be unique in the marketplace and stand for a solution that no one else is providing? Frankly that's the very best way to not only attract media, particularly major media, but also to reach your largest audience.

Here is a BEAUTIFUL example of just what I mean.

A former platform coaching student from one of my Get Known Now groups has had a serious media breakthrough. Sandra Ghalinger is a breast cancer survivor who has carved out an excellent niche for herself combining the unlikely elements of breast cancer and humor. And her idea is so powerful, and so needed, that the media's already pounding a path to her door before she's even got the blog up.

Sandra recently made the life-saving decision to have a double mastectomy at age 38, and so decided to have a 'Bon Voyage to my Boobies' party. A friend mentioned that the media would love it, and so she decided to test the notion by emailing the Providence Journal about it. They called within an hour and ran a front page story complete with pictures.

Here's the article.

While Sandra doesn't have a blog/site up yet, you can contact her if you're curious to learn more about her work via email. I've also volunteered to give her a bit of transparent coaching in my Expert Status ezine this week on just how to maximize that media moment without a website on the ready.  Sign up and we'll whap a copy to you right away!

Images of Beauty on the Web

While this is not strictly about platform building, it’s certainly relevant to our quest to present ourselves authentically … and uniquely .. on the web. (That’s something I take great pleasure on coaching my platform clients on.)

My good buddy, Stever Robbins, passed this on to me – it’s a short video from Dove soap about how a model achieves her look in the media. And it’s informative for those of us who are contemplating our next head shot – or just how we want people to perceive us. Personally, I live for the day when we won’t all have to be picture perfect, or even totally ‘slick’ in that packaged, glamorized way. And yet … take a look, for this is the current image of beauty that is most often presented in the media.

Go to http://box37.com/q1enk

Thoughts?

Can you REALLY set up a thriving info product?

Stop and ask yourself this question right now: what little (or big) nugget of precious information could you turn into an info product right now?

If you’re like my daughter, Teal, you have something you could sell right now that could potentially attract and immediate audience. AND you may or may not be ready yet.

In the case of Teal, who is a singer about to begin her freshman year at Berklee College of Music, there are three finished demos with her vocals on them just waiting to become a mini-CD. Thanks to an inspired dinner at an Indian restaurant in NYC with me and Andrea J Lee, infoproduct guru to the stars, she now sees how easy it would be to set that up – no more than three or four hours of her time.

And yet … where’s the CD? Like many of us, Teal’s been meaning to get to it. She’s working more than one summer job – waitressing, babysitting, modeling, all time-consuming efforts that require you actually show up somewhere and put in solid hours of work. So who’s got time to set up something as nebulous as an info-product (or in her case, an intellectual property)?

While I don’t know if this is the case for Teal, what is true for many of us is that behind all of that lack of time is a quivery case of self-doubt. Would I REALLY be able to set up an info-product that people will buy? What if it isn’t very good? How can I possibly think people would buy MY stuff … when they could be so many others like it?

Aye, there’s the rub. Nothing like over-think to solidly squash all dreams of info products on the Web. Or is it just over-think? All I know is that there’s a whole lot of procrastinating going on – and not just around here. It’s true among us all.

So ask yourself … do you have an info nugget to share, the doing of which would produce more time and more money for you? If so, and if you’re not getting busy on your important project, I’d love to hear why.

(PS… Did I mention I’ve been working on one of my info-projects for five years? <grin>)

Playing with Google Adwords

So I’m back at it, a mere two years after my last failed attempt. That would be attempting to get Google Adwords to send lots of sales my way.

And yes, I’m doing so because Tim Ferriss made it all sounds so easy in The 4 Hour Workweek. NOT because my prior experience backs up what he has to say about it.

Here’s the ugly truth: twice I’ve attempted to use Google Adwords to drive traffic and sales, blown several thousand dollars, and both times fallen flat on my face. But here’s what’s new. My first attempt, five years ago, was when Adwords was new, untested, tricky and full of obstacles. My second attempt, two years ago was when I was thinking like a dilletante instead of a marketer, and I simply didn’t have my heart in it.

Now, I’m back for a third try, and here’s what I already observe. Google has wisely added the Google Adwords Editing Tool which allows you to download it for free, and organize, tweak and create campaigns offline. This is awesome because these campaigns are time consuming to set up if you do them right, so I can tap away on trains, planes, etc and get the job done.

Secondly, Google’s new generation keyword tool (also free) … formerly known as ‘Keyword Sandbox’ is excellent. This is a keyword search tool that’s totally geared towards setting up Adwords campaigns – something even the redoubtable WordTracker doesn’t quite do. (WT doesn’t tell you how much various Adwords keywords will probably cost you, for instance.)

Also, distance is the great clarifier. I now see that I was going about my two attempts in a really scattered, unfocussed way. I didn’t REALLY have clear, effective keyphrases working for me. I didn’t have organized campaigns with 50-100 keyphrases getting tested. I didn’t even lead people to the right landing page … waffling between freebie offers and sales pages, etc..

Now I’m organized! And I’ll report back here soon on my five day test and what I learned. Armed with my new Google tools I’m feeling much better about possibilities here. More adult, shall we say.

Anyone out there having success with Adwords?

More Comments on Marketing Calendars

Got the following on my recent post about the necessity of setting up a marketing calendar for the year.

Lisa Solomon added this helpful link:

“The Marketing Experiments Journal has a 2007 Merchandising Calendar that is very helpful for internet product retailers, and might give others some ideas as well. Take a look at their calendar .”

Podcast ‘Queen’ and fellow marketing conference speaker Leesa Barnes dropped in with this comment:

“When I hired a VA earlier this year, I was forced to put an annual sales calendar together as I could no longer "shoot from the hip."

This has kept me organized and less overwhelmed. Being a creative person, I tend to think of new products all the time. I think I now have enough product ideas to last me the next 2-years :) However, my sales calendar encourages me to put all my product ideas in a folder and focus on the products launches and sales that I already have slated in the calendar.”

Finally, Tammi Lenski asked who I share said calendars with … how do I ‘leverage clarity around my calendar in interactions with VA, etc.”

Awesome question, Tammi! Here’s the thing. I’m not sure I AM leveraging my calendar well yet at all – I suspect the best way to do this is to load it up on our web-based, shared calendar (www.trumba.com). Trumba permits different colors for different calendars (read, different types of events) – so yes, we have a marketing calendar. And on it should be due dates for sales copy, email broadcasts, invitations to affiliates, production deadlines for products, launch dates for products,  and more. We’ll be integrating those soon.

I’d be interested in hearing what systems you folks are using that work well with sharing this kind of info.

More on Fluky Teleconference Lines

I got some interesting comments on my recent post about the failings of certain free conference call lines, including www.freeconferencecall.com

Surprisingly (to me, at least) Nancy King of Free Conference Call stopped in to comment. (Are they doing Google Alerts to fend off bad press?) Here’s the essence of what Nancy said:

“We appreciate all the loyal support to FreeConference from our users during this challenging year. Major carriers have indeed taken actions to disrupt our low cost competing services, but we were able to overcome these problems by late spring. But this could be the source of many of the industry wide comments posted above.

To accommodate the extraordinary growth we have experienced this past year, we have also been making a switch to a new, proprietary conference bridge system that will allow us to increase the maximum size of individual conferences (we have already increased our minimum for all conferences to 150 callers) and add additional noise filtering technology. This change will prevent busy signals and scheduling conflicts, and it will allow us to continue to provide you with the high level of quality you have come to expect from our services.

One note specific to issues of sound quality on very large conferences: with any service, the more people you have on a conference bridge, the more chances there are for background noise and variants from each individual’s phone line. As noted above, we are also introducing new technology that essentially filters out any noises other than those from a person speaking to help reduce this problem. There are ways for the organizer to help control this issue with large groups, by resetting organizer conference controls to Q&A or Presentation Mode. There is an explanation of how these work at http://www.freeconference.com/ConferenceQuality.aspx.

We apologize to any user whose service has been disrupted by these two changes in the last few months …. “ Etc etc etc.

I also heard from reader Matthew Scott who reports

“I have used www.instantteleseminar.com with great success for the past two months. Besides the fact it serves as a great bridge line, it really serves as a great and interactive communication means for clients. My clients love it. They don't have the hassle of a webinar, and soon instant teleseminar.com will have a more user friendly webinar than webex. Also on the near future is the ability to create on-demand with audio transition PPT presentations.

I also had some customer service questions early in my sign-up period and the response was tremendous.”

Thanks for the comments, folks.

Who’s ‘The Maker’ in Your Business?

Up here in the Adirondacks, where I live on the shores of Lake Champlain, I’m lucky to be members of The Essex Farm – a wonderful CSA farm that has 35 members for whom it raises beef, pork, chickens, dairy, all manner of veggies, maple syrup, grains, beans, soap, herbs, flowers … just about anything you can think of. And in the midst of this swirling madness they keep it organized and functional without the use of gas engines – harvesting, for example, with horse drawn teams and 19th century machinery.

How do they keep things rolling? A mere team of 5 does the work (all of whom, interestingly, have Ivy League educations and most of whom have bicycled cross country.) The secret is that each week someone is ‘The Maker’.

The Maker makes things happen – they organize who’s going to slaughter the chickens, for instance, then they go get the chickens, hand out the duties and get those feather flying. The Maker gets on the phone to members if they have to and mobilizes additional troupes – or the Maker calls up assorted suppliers if some necessity has fallen short. The Maker is the doer or delegator of all deeds … but interestingly, just for a week.

Then the job falls to the next person who looks over what must be done for the week and steps into the role of Maker.

What I like about this is that it’s egalitarian; each Maker gets to determine how things will best happen.  And because the Maker rotates, no one bears the full burden for being ‘in charge’ for too long.  So no one gets unduly burned out. And there are no political struggles to be top dog, or in the good graces of top dog. In fact, there is no top dog. Just a bunch of doers and makers.

Nice idea!

Interesting model, huh?

Update on my Retreat

OK … perfect honesty here. I wrote yesterday’s post about going on retreat a full 10 days ago. Wrote it, giddily shut the file, didn’t load it … just found it now. Uh, yeah. I guess I needed a vacation!

And it brought a smile to my face. Because what Tim neglected to say in his ‘just go on retreat’ philosophy in The Four Hour Workweek is to make sure you have a really good working  email program in place. No, I did not have one \went I pushed ‘send’ on the big email that was going to cover me for the next few weeks with my VA … I thought I did, but it turns out setting up my new Mac email was a bit trickier than I thought.

One problematic email connection plus a ten day retreat PLUS an email with all my big to-do’s for the time I was gone meant …  well … the email was never received and not much got done.

If only VA’s were telepathic! 

But in true Tim Ferriss spirit I’ve just cancelled a limited mini-launch, said ‘Que sera sera!’ and pushed ahead. Oh yeah, and I finally got the big email into the hands of my good VA (who would have called me if she’d known it was supposed to be coming and therefore hadn’t arrived.)

When living the 4 hour workweek philosophy, you just gotta roll with the punches, achieve less sometimes, and breathe more.

If You Don't Have a Blog Yet, Read This …

So Pam Slim, who has been my excellent co-coach in my Extraordinary Business Builder's Club, recently had another media win the other day.

We were chatting online when she let it slip that the Wall St. Journal Online PR folks sent her a message asking to share something with her readers.

"How flipped is our traditional media/blogging relationship becoming?" she wrote.

Well, pretty dang flipped, I'd say. In fact, just on the power of Pam's blog, she recently was recognized at a book signing for marketing superstar Seth Godin. Seth, himself, recognized her name when she went to have him sign her book. 'Pam Slim?" he remarked. "You're famous!"

How sweet is that? And all, I say, through the power of a well-branded, well written blog.

Follow Up on Sandra's Story

Correct what I just wrote yesterday … Sandra DOES have her blog up. This gal doesn't fool around, even fresh out of major surgery.

Just because Sandra Ghalinger is not only a courageous survivor but smart, too, she got her blog up in NO TIME. Here's what she's posted on her new site: 'Tittyology"…. It's still bare bones and there are pieces missing, by this is great stuff. I'm already sucked in.

The Power of an Original Idea

OK, so you know how I'm always harping about how you have to be unique in the marketplace and stand for a solution that no one else is providing? Frankly that's the very best way to not only attract media, particularly major media, but also to reach your largest audience.

Here is a BEAUTIFUL example of just what I mean.

A former platform coaching student from one of my Get Known Now groups has had a serious media breakthrough. Sandra Ghalinger is a breast cancer survivor who has carved out an excellent niche for herself combining the unlikely elements of breast cancer and humor. And her idea is so powerful, and so needed, that the media's already pounding a path to her door before she's even got the blog up.

Sandra recently made the life-saving decision to have a double mastectomy at age 38, and so decided to have a 'Bon Voyage to my Boobies' party. A friend mentioned that the media would love it, and so she decided to test the notion by emailing the Providence Journal about it. They called within an hour and ran a front page story complete with pictures.

Here's the article.

While Sandra doesn't have a blog/site up yet, you can contact her if you're curious to learn more about her work via email. I've also volunteered to give her a bit of transparent coaching in my Expert Status ezine this week on just how to maximize that media moment without a website on the ready.  Sign up and we'll whap a copy to you right away!

Images of Beauty on the Web

While this is not strictly about platform building, it’s certainly relevant to our quest to present ourselves authentically … and uniquely .. on the web. (That’s something I take great pleasure on coaching my platform clients on.)

My good buddy, Stever Robbins, passed this on to me – it’s a short video from Dove soap about how a model achieves her look in the media. And it’s informative for those of us who are contemplating our next head shot – or just how we want people to perceive us. Personally, I live for the day when we won’t all have to be picture perfect, or even totally ‘slick’ in that packaged, glamorized way. And yet … take a look, for this is the current image of beauty that is most often presented in the media.

Go to http://box37.com/q1enk

Thoughts?

Can you REALLY set up a thriving info product?

Stop and ask yourself this question right now: what little (or big) nugget of precious information could you turn into an info product right now?

If you’re like my daughter, Teal, you have something you could sell right now that could potentially attract and immediate audience. AND you may or may not be ready yet.

In the case of Teal, who is a singer about to begin her freshman year at Berklee College of Music, there are three finished demos with her vocals on them just waiting to become a mini-CD. Thanks to an inspired dinner at an Indian restaurant in NYC with me and Andrea J Lee, infoproduct guru to the stars, she now sees how easy it would be to set that up – no more than three or four hours of her time.

And yet … where’s the CD? Like many of us, Teal’s been meaning to get to it. She’s working more than one summer job – waitressing, babysitting, modeling, all time-consuming efforts that require you actually show up somewhere and put in solid hours of work. So who’s got time to set up something as nebulous as an info-product (or in her case, an intellectual property)?

While I don’t know if this is the case for Teal, what is true for many of us is that behind all of that lack of time is a quivery case of self-doubt. Would I REALLY be able to set up an info-product that people will buy? What if it isn’t very good? How can I possibly think people would buy MY stuff … when they could be so many others like it?

Aye, there’s the rub. Nothing like over-think to solidly squash all dreams of info products on the Web. Or is it just over-think? All I know is that there’s a whole lot of procrastinating going on – and not just around here. It’s true among us all.

So ask yourself … do you have an info nugget to share, the doing of which would produce more time and more money for you? If so, and if you’re not getting busy on your important project, I’d love to hear why.

(PS… Did I mention I’ve been working on one of my info-projects for five years? <grin>)

Playing with Google Adwords

So I’m back at it, a mere two years after my last failed attempt. That would be attempting to get Google Adwords to send lots of sales my way.

And yes, I’m doing so because Tim Ferriss made it all sounds so easy in The 4 Hour Workweek. NOT because my prior experience backs up what he has to say about it.

Here’s the ugly truth: twice I’ve attempted to use Google Adwords to drive traffic and sales, blown several thousand dollars, and both times fallen flat on my face. But here’s what’s new. My first attempt, five years ago, was when Adwords was new, untested, tricky and full of obstacles. My second attempt, two years ago was when I was thinking like a dilletante instead of a marketer, and I simply didn’t have my heart in it.

Now, I’m back for a third try, and here’s what I already observe. Google has wisely added the Google Adwords Editing Tool which allows you to download it for free, and organize, tweak and create campaigns offline. This is awesome because these campaigns are time consuming to set up if you do them right, so I can tap away on trains, planes, etc and get the job done.

Secondly, Google’s new generation keyword tool (also free) … formerly known as ‘Keyword Sandbox’ is excellent. This is a keyword search tool that’s totally geared towards setting up Adwords campaigns – something even the redoubtable WordTracker doesn’t quite do. (WT doesn’t tell you how much various Adwords keywords will probably cost you, for instance.)

Also, distance is the great clarifier. I now see that I was going about my two attempts in a really scattered, unfocussed way. I didn’t REALLY have clear, effective keyphrases working for me. I didn’t have organized campaigns with 50-100 keyphrases getting tested. I didn’t even lead people to the right landing page … waffling between freebie offers and sales pages, etc..

Now I’m organized! And I’ll report back here soon on my five day test and what I learned. Armed with my new Google tools I’m feeling much better about possibilities here. More adult, shall we say.

Anyone out there having success with Adwords?

More Comments on Marketing Calendars

Got the following on my recent post about the necessity of setting up a marketing calendar for the year.

Lisa Solomon added this helpful link:

“The Marketing Experiments Journal has a 2007 Merchandising Calendar that is very helpful for internet product retailers, and might give others some ideas as well. Take a look at their calendar .”

Podcast ‘Queen’ and fellow marketing conference speaker Leesa Barnes dropped in with this comment:

“When I hired a VA earlier this year, I was forced to put an annual sales calendar together as I could no longer "shoot from the hip."

This has kept me organized and less overwhelmed. Being a creative person, I tend to think of new products all the time. I think I now have enough product ideas to last me the next 2-years :) However, my sales calendar encourages me to put all my product ideas in a folder and focus on the products launches and sales that I already have slated in the calendar.”

Finally, Tammi Lenski asked who I share said calendars with … how do I ‘leverage clarity around my calendar in interactions with VA, etc.”

Awesome question, Tammi! Here’s the thing. I’m not sure I AM leveraging my calendar well yet at all – I suspect the best way to do this is to load it up on our web-based, shared calendar (www.trumba.com). Trumba permits different colors for different calendars (read, different types of events) – so yes, we have a marketing calendar. And on it should be due dates for sales copy, email broadcasts, invitations to affiliates, production deadlines for products, launch dates for products,  and more. We’ll be integrating those soon.

I’d be interested in hearing what systems you folks are using that work well with sharing this kind of info.

More on Fluky Teleconference Lines

I got some interesting comments on my recent post about the failings of certain free conference call lines, including www.freeconferencecall.com

Surprisingly (to me, at least) Nancy King of Free Conference Call stopped in to comment. (Are they doing Google Alerts to fend off bad press?) Here’s the essence of what Nancy said:

“We appreciate all the loyal support to FreeConference from our users during this challenging year. Major carriers have indeed taken actions to disrupt our low cost competing services, but we were able to overcome these problems by late spring. But this could be the source of many of the industry wide comments posted above.

To accommodate the extraordinary growth we have experienced this past year, we have also been making a switch to a new, proprietary conference bridge system that will allow us to increase the maximum size of individual conferences (we have already increased our minimum for all conferences to 150 callers) and add additional noise filtering technology. This change will prevent busy signals and scheduling conflicts, and it will allow us to continue to provide you with the high level of quality you have come to expect from our services.

One note specific to issues of sound quality on very large conferences: with any service, the more people you have on a conference bridge, the more chances there are for background noise and variants from each individual’s phone line. As noted above, we are also introducing new technology that essentially filters out any noises other than those from a person speaking to help reduce this problem. There are ways for the organizer to help control this issue with large groups, by resetting organizer conference controls to Q&A or Presentation Mode. There is an explanation of how these work at http://www.freeconference.com/ConferenceQuality.aspx.

We apologize to any user whose service has been disrupted by these two changes in the last few months …. “ Etc etc etc.

I also heard from reader Matthew Scott who reports

“I have used www.instantteleseminar.com with great success for the past two months. Besides the fact it serves as a great bridge line, it really serves as a great and interactive communication means for clients. My clients love it. They don't have the hassle of a webinar, and soon instant teleseminar.com will have a more user friendly webinar than webex. Also on the near future is the ability to create on-demand with audio transition PPT presentations.

I also had some customer service questions early in my sign-up period and the response was tremendous.”

Thanks for the comments, folks.

Who’s ‘The Maker’ in Your Business?

Up here in the Adirondacks, where I live on the shores of Lake Champlain, I’m lucky to be members of The Essex Farm – a wonderful CSA farm that has 35 members for whom it raises beef, pork, chickens, dairy, all manner of veggies, maple syrup, grains, beans, soap, herbs, flowers … just about anything you can think of. And in the midst of this swirling madness they keep it organized and functional without the use of gas engines – harvesting, for example, with horse drawn teams and 19th century machinery.

How do they keep things rolling? A mere team of 5 does the work (all of whom, interestingly, have Ivy League educations and most of whom have bicycled cross country.) The secret is that each week someone is ‘The Maker’.

The Maker makes things happen – they organize who’s going to slaughter the chickens, for instance, then they go get the chickens, hand out the duties and get those feather flying. The Maker gets on the phone to members if they have to and mobilizes additional troupes – or the Maker calls up assorted suppliers if some necessity has fallen short. The Maker is the doer or delegator of all deeds … but interestingly, just for a week.

Then the job falls to the next person who looks over what must be done for the week and steps into the role of Maker.

What I like about this is that it’s egalitarian; each Maker gets to determine how things will best happen.  And because the Maker rotates, no one bears the full burden for being ‘in charge’ for too long.  So no one gets unduly burned out. And there are no political struggles to be top dog, or in the good graces of top dog. In fact, there is no top dog. Just a bunch of doers and makers.

Nice idea!

Interesting model, huh?

Update on my Retreat

OK … perfect honesty here. I wrote yesterday’s post about going on retreat a full 10 days ago. Wrote it, giddily shut the file, didn’t load it … just found it now. Uh, yeah. I guess I needed a vacation!

And it brought a smile to my face. Because what Tim neglected to say in his ‘just go on retreat’ philosophy in The Four Hour Workweek is to make sure you have a really good working  email program in place. No, I did not have one \went I pushed ‘send’ on the big email that was going to cover me for the next few weeks with my VA … I thought I did, but it turns out setting up my new Mac email was a bit trickier than I thought.

One problematic email connection plus a ten day retreat PLUS an email with all my big to-do’s for the time I was gone meant …  well … the email was never received and not much got done.

If only VA’s were telepathic! 

But in true Tim Ferriss spirit I’ve just cancelled a limited mini-launch, said ‘Que sera sera!’ and pushed ahead. Oh yeah, and I finally got the big email into the hands of my good VA (who would have called me if she’d known it was supposed to be coming and therefore hadn’t arrived.)

When living the 4 hour workweek philosophy, you just gotta roll with the punches, achieve less sometimes, and breathe more.