I try and keep up with LinkedIn and Yahoo answers. Both are good methods for getting the word out on you. The reason is easy. Answering questions establishes you as an expert in any number of topics. Experts are easy to hire.
I had the chance to answer a networking question recently, and it reminded me to tell once again, the story behind Marketing Me! and why I started this blog.
A few years ago, I found myself suddenly out of a job. Since then, I have turned the experience into the theme for my personal blog.
Here were my steps to secure a new and far better position in 30 days.
To start, know what you want to do and what industry you want to work in. That is a given that many overlook when they are out of work.
1) Collect your contacts. Divide them into hot, warm and cold with hot being good possible employers. Warm contacts are persons you use for advice and referrals. Cold contacts are names without possibility but good to have as referring points.
2) Start phoning. Never start out with email - nothing says lazy like email Call, connect and communicate.
3) Clearly state what you are looking for. Never phone and state "I need a job, got anything?". Instead, use the value proposition "I have known you a long time. What is your best advice about where I should look/what I should do?"
4) Plan to visit in person for follow up. I scheduled a trip to an industry convention which happened to take place two weeks after my last day. I scheduled meeting times with prospects. That included breakfasts, lunches, dinners, walks, anything which put me in front of a prospective employer. Remember to schedule with a set time and place. Leave nothing to chance. Be flexible. You may meet someone walking from one hall to another or on a shuttle bus or at a reception (all of these happened to me).
5) Meet. Be clear about your goals, skills and value to any prospect.
6) Thank. Send a thank you note, hand written, never email, to each person who took the time to meet with you.
7) Follow up. I was fortunate. I ended up with five solid job offers, two possibilities and dozens of future business contacts. Had this not happened I would have directly contacted each of these people again until something happened.
28 days to the day, I had my starting date at my next job. It was a lot of work and travel, but it has paid off nicely. To this day, I network constantly.
Marketing Me! has transformed into a blog about anything which appeals to me in my profession. Be it business travel, cell phones, productivity tools, conference calling and even entertainment.
In the 21st century, we are often defined by our career or more correctly, our work. Marketing Me! has become my diary, journal and sanity check over the past three years.
I don't plan on changing any time soon.
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog. Show all posts
Monday
Marketing Me! They should do something
I read an interesting article not too long ago which described the conditions in the former U.S.S.R. following the fall of communism. Besides the shortages, crime and anarchy which came after the heavy-handed government ceased to exist, everything having to do with work and employment changed as well.
The author primarily noted middle aged men, going day after day to their offices and factories, sitting idly for want of something productive to and complaining endlessly that the government should do something.
Election year or not in the U.S., we hear this frequently, that no matter what the problem, the government "should do something".
Frankly, I don't know what it is people want the government or anybody else for that matter to do for them.
Rather, Marketing Me! declares that YOU have to do something for yourself rather than waiting for the other guy to step up.
Look, the Internet alone has created a huge virtual billboard with your mug displayed potentially for the whole world to see. And in the spirit of the long tail, the more traffic you can run to YOU the more business, however small, you can build for yourself.
How? Again let's always start with what we know. If you have not already, start a blog. Start a couple. You can use Blogger like I do, or Wordpress or Typepad. If you feel really gung ho, get your own domain name and host your blog on your new name. Which domain name? Register your name (I finally got mine this weekend!). Register your business skill or calling. Check out the GoDaddy link to the right and get your domain name and hosting account today!
Start a mailing list. I use AWeber, but there are lots of them (use a real mailing list company rather than Outlook. Spam complaints can shut down your access). Build an opt-in mailing list (people join voluntarily rather than you spamming). Remind people weekly through email of your existence and expertise.
Write an ebook. It is not that hard. Pick a subject. Write a 16 page ebook. Convert it to pdf and give it away to new subscribers to your mailing list. It helps to make it related to your line of work, but people remember the expert no matter what you write about.
Why stop there? Offer to speak. There are plenty of events in your line of work that need speakers. I recently signed up to speak at a telephone carrier sales meeting. Yes, there will only be about 30 attending, but if I am good, that will be 30 new evangelists spreading the word about my brand.
What else? Have you ever considered consulting? Have you ever considered starting your own business? You already have the blog and domain name, why not use it to generate extra revenue for your time?
There is so much you can do right now that will result in right now opportunities that it makes no sense to wait around for the "government" to do something.
So get off your butt and get busy. Time is wasting!
The author primarily noted middle aged men, going day after day to their offices and factories, sitting idly for want of something productive to and complaining endlessly that the government should do something.
Election year or not in the U.S., we hear this frequently, that no matter what the problem, the government "should do something".
Frankly, I don't know what it is people want the government or anybody else for that matter to do for them.
Rather, Marketing Me! declares that YOU have to do something for yourself rather than waiting for the other guy to step up.
Look, the Internet alone has created a huge virtual billboard with your mug displayed potentially for the whole world to see. And in the spirit of the long tail, the more traffic you can run to YOU the more business, however small, you can build for yourself.
How? Again let's always start with what we know. If you have not already, start a blog. Start a couple. You can use Blogger like I do, or Wordpress or Typepad. If you feel really gung ho, get your own domain name and host your blog on your new name. Which domain name? Register your name (I finally got mine this weekend!). Register your business skill or calling. Check out the GoDaddy link to the right and get your domain name and hosting account today!
Start a mailing list. I use AWeber, but there are lots of them (use a real mailing list company rather than Outlook. Spam complaints can shut down your access). Build an opt-in mailing list (people join voluntarily rather than you spamming). Remind people weekly through email of your existence and expertise.
Write an ebook. It is not that hard. Pick a subject. Write a 16 page ebook. Convert it to pdf and give it away to new subscribers to your mailing list. It helps to make it related to your line of work, but people remember the expert no matter what you write about.
Why stop there? Offer to speak. There are plenty of events in your line of work that need speakers. I recently signed up to speak at a telephone carrier sales meeting. Yes, there will only be about 30 attending, but if I am good, that will be 30 new evangelists spreading the word about my brand.
What else? Have you ever considered consulting? Have you ever considered starting your own business? You already have the blog and domain name, why not use it to generate extra revenue for your time?
There is so much you can do right now that will result in right now opportunities that it makes no sense to wait around for the "government" to do something.
So get off your butt and get busy. Time is wasting!
Marketing Me! What blogs can learn from garage sales
Garage sale, yard sale, tag sale, rummage sale.. all names for very similar events.
People pulling their unwanted things out of the house and putting them up for sale in the front yard or garage.
The idea is that with enough advertising and drive-by traffic (and coupled with good pricing and an understanding of what sells), one can make a few extra dollars on a Saturday morning.
This past weekend I got together with a few neighbors and held a garage sale. We started around 7:30 AM and knocked off at 2:00 PM that same day. All in all, it was pretty successful; I ended up netting a couple of hundred bucks!
But the process made me think about the similarity between blogs like Marketing Me! and holding a garage sale.
1) Garage sales fail unless someone knows you are holding one.
For our sale, we placed signs at both entrances to our neighborhood as well as two nearby busy intersections. We put the signs out Friday night and checked them again on Saturday AM just to be sure they were still there.
We placed large signs in front of the hosting home (facing both directions). We put out orange traffic cones in the driveway and directly in front of the house to keep the view unobstructed and to draw attention to the sale home.
The result was plenty of traffic on our street targeted for our garage sale (as opposed to house buyers for instance).
Although we did not place ads in the local newspaper, we could have greatly increased our targeted traffic by using this tried and true method.
Your blog is the same.
What sort of signs are you placing in your neighborhood to drive traffic to your blog?
And if you get traffic, is it targeted to your blog or just readers stopping by for a few seconds?
Do you Digg your blog entries? Stumble? Use Squidoo? Technorati?
How are you promoting your blog outside of your "neighborhood"?
Are you taking advantage of tried and true means to drive traffic to your site?
Like AdWords or MS Adcenter?
2) More than one garage sale in the same location can increase traffic.
Besides the garage sale we held, another neighbor held his own.. next door. We doubled our traffic due to walk up traffic coming to his garage sale which he heavily advertised. The idea of convincing several of your neighbors to hold sales on the same day increases your chance of receiving more traffic.
Your blog can receive more traffic it is associated with another well-trafficked site.
For instance, is your blog directly linked to your company website? Or your personal web site? Or perhaps your blog is directly related to another more popular blog by subject or author relationship? Are you taking advantage of this organic traffic?
3) Know what your buyer wants.
In garage sale Nirvana, finding a priceless antique or an under priced designer outfit is the measure by which garage sale buying success is judged.
Now I didn't put any of those sorts of things up for sale (if I had any!), but I have held garage sales in my neighborhood and I know what type of customer to expect and what they are looking for.
I knew that children's and women's clothing, bedding, electronics, and certain furniture sells well. Then again, I also knew that used children's toys, dishes and standard housewares typically did not move.
So I matched my products according to my market. Based upon my revenues, I must have planned right.
I began the day with three carloads of stuff. I ended the day with only enough leftovers to fill my backseat. Obviously I matched my product to what the market wanted.
Does your blog match your market? Or does your resume assistance blog regularly wander into political discussions? Or maybe what you did this weekend?
If you are driving traffic to your blog, "sell" what your readers want.
On a related note, what type of ads, if you run them, does your blog feature?
Are your ads and offers related to your topic or are they hit and miss?
4) Sell other products are your garage sale to increase overall revenue.
My son and daughter got into the act at the garage sale. They baked a few dozen chocolate chip cookies, made several quarts of lemonade and filled an ice chest with sodas, juice boxes and Gatorade.
The day was hot and the kids sold out of lemonade, cookies, Gatorade and most of the sodas ( the juice boxes did not move; I guess the lemonade matched the demographic better ).
At the end of the garage sale, selling cookies and lemonade at a quarter ($.25) each, my children pulled in over twenty dollars! That was revenue I had not expected nor planned for when putting out my items for sale.
At our next garage sale, we plan on having more beverages, a better point of sale fixture and more cookies. We think we can double our revenue that way.
If revenue from your blog is important, are you optimizing every possibility?
If you are in sales, are you optimizing the way your customers can buy product from you?
In addition to AdSense or other contextual ads, are you offering subscriptions, other affiliate products or even asking for donations to offset your hosting costs?
Blog revenue comes in many shapes and forms. Have you setup your lemonade stand yet?
5) Service matters in every business including garage sales.
Customers like good service.
For my garage sales, I made sure I had plenty of change. I offered to carry purchases to buyer's cars. I provided tie-down rope for large purchases. I thanked my buyers. I welcomed early shoppers and waited for the late comer. I made deals based upon the request of the customer. I "threw in" freebies in order to close bigger deals.
What service do you provide on your blog?
Do you respond to reader's comments? Or do you turn comments off altogether? Do you thank your readers with helpful links, free e-book downloads, link backs to their sites?
6) Measure success and expand upon what works.
When a product moved quickly at my garage sale (let's say baby items), I responded by moving similar items to the front of the sale area. Result? Customers wanting baby items quickly found them and purchased!
Furthermore, I worked up a list of some other steps I will take to improve my garage sale revenues.
a) My next sale will be in front of my house which will allow for better parking and some interesting traffic (and less hauling for me!).
b) I will put out more items which I know will sell and might even contact friends who may not necessarily want to participate in a garage sale, but might want to give me some merchandise to unload for them. (affiliate sales!).
c) I will let my neighbors know it might be a good time for them to hold a sale the same day.
d) I will place more signs in high traffic areas and will run a classified ad this time.
e) I might even use Craig's list to advertise the site (garage sales meet Web 2.0!).
f) And I definitely will have that lemonade stand out front. Goal: Forty dollars in refreshment sales!
What is your plan for your blog? Do you measure your traffic? Do you know what works and what doesn't?
Do you routinely rearrange your website based upon what your readership clicks?
Study your blogs stats and make appropriate changes. If possible, split test your site and take the better results.
A blog is only as good as the stats it generates and the changes which are based upon those findings.
If clutter in the home has you down, plan a garage (stoop, tag, rummage or yard) sale and shrink your material footprint and you might make some great spare change.
If your blog is going nowhere, think about revising, revamping and re-releasing using the garage sale plan and start building some great traffic and you might improve you page ranking a make some real money!
People pulling their unwanted things out of the house and putting them up for sale in the front yard or garage.
The idea is that with enough advertising and drive-by traffic (and coupled with good pricing and an understanding of what sells), one can make a few extra dollars on a Saturday morning.
This past weekend I got together with a few neighbors and held a garage sale. We started around 7:30 AM and knocked off at 2:00 PM that same day. All in all, it was pretty successful; I ended up netting a couple of hundred bucks!
But the process made me think about the similarity between blogs like Marketing Me! and holding a garage sale.
1) Garage sales fail unless someone knows you are holding one.
For our sale, we placed signs at both entrances to our neighborhood as well as two nearby busy intersections. We put the signs out Friday night and checked them again on Saturday AM just to be sure they were still there.
We placed large signs in front of the hosting home (facing both directions). We put out orange traffic cones in the driveway and directly in front of the house to keep the view unobstructed and to draw attention to the sale home.
The result was plenty of traffic on our street targeted for our garage sale (as opposed to house buyers for instance).
Although we did not place ads in the local newspaper, we could have greatly increased our targeted traffic by using this tried and true method.
Your blog is the same.
What sort of signs are you placing in your neighborhood to drive traffic to your blog?
And if you get traffic, is it targeted to your blog or just readers stopping by for a few seconds?
Do you Digg your blog entries? Stumble? Use Squidoo? Technorati?
How are you promoting your blog outside of your "neighborhood"?
Are you taking advantage of tried and true means to drive traffic to your site?
Like AdWords or MS Adcenter?
2) More than one garage sale in the same location can increase traffic.
Besides the garage sale we held, another neighbor held his own.. next door. We doubled our traffic due to walk up traffic coming to his garage sale which he heavily advertised. The idea of convincing several of your neighbors to hold sales on the same day increases your chance of receiving more traffic.
Your blog can receive more traffic it is associated with another well-trafficked site.
For instance, is your blog directly linked to your company website? Or your personal web site? Or perhaps your blog is directly related to another more popular blog by subject or author relationship? Are you taking advantage of this organic traffic?
3) Know what your buyer wants.
In garage sale Nirvana, finding a priceless antique or an under priced designer outfit is the measure by which garage sale buying success is judged.
Now I didn't put any of those sorts of things up for sale (if I had any!), but I have held garage sales in my neighborhood and I know what type of customer to expect and what they are looking for.
I knew that children's and women's clothing, bedding, electronics, and certain furniture sells well. Then again, I also knew that used children's toys, dishes and standard housewares typically did not move.
So I matched my products according to my market. Based upon my revenues, I must have planned right.
I began the day with three carloads of stuff. I ended the day with only enough leftovers to fill my backseat. Obviously I matched my product to what the market wanted.
Does your blog match your market? Or does your resume assistance blog regularly wander into political discussions? Or maybe what you did this weekend?
If you are driving traffic to your blog, "sell" what your readers want.
On a related note, what type of ads, if you run them, does your blog feature?
Are your ads and offers related to your topic or are they hit and miss?
4) Sell other products are your garage sale to increase overall revenue.
My son and daughter got into the act at the garage sale. They baked a few dozen chocolate chip cookies, made several quarts of lemonade and filled an ice chest with sodas, juice boxes and Gatorade.
The day was hot and the kids sold out of lemonade, cookies, Gatorade and most of the sodas ( the juice boxes did not move; I guess the lemonade matched the demographic better ).
At the end of the garage sale, selling cookies and lemonade at a quarter ($.25) each, my children pulled in over twenty dollars! That was revenue I had not expected nor planned for when putting out my items for sale.
At our next garage sale, we plan on having more beverages, a better point of sale fixture and more cookies. We think we can double our revenue that way.
If revenue from your blog is important, are you optimizing every possibility?
If you are in sales, are you optimizing the way your customers can buy product from you?
In addition to AdSense or other contextual ads, are you offering subscriptions, other affiliate products or even asking for donations to offset your hosting costs?
Blog revenue comes in many shapes and forms. Have you setup your lemonade stand yet?
5) Service matters in every business including garage sales.
Customers like good service.
For my garage sales, I made sure I had plenty of change. I offered to carry purchases to buyer's cars. I provided tie-down rope for large purchases. I thanked my buyers. I welcomed early shoppers and waited for the late comer. I made deals based upon the request of the customer. I "threw in" freebies in order to close bigger deals.
What service do you provide on your blog?
Do you respond to reader's comments? Or do you turn comments off altogether? Do you thank your readers with helpful links, free e-book downloads, link backs to their sites?
6) Measure success and expand upon what works.
When a product moved quickly at my garage sale (let's say baby items), I responded by moving similar items to the front of the sale area. Result? Customers wanting baby items quickly found them and purchased!
Furthermore, I worked up a list of some other steps I will take to improve my garage sale revenues.
a) My next sale will be in front of my house which will allow for better parking and some interesting traffic (and less hauling for me!).
b) I will put out more items which I know will sell and might even contact friends who may not necessarily want to participate in a garage sale, but might want to give me some merchandise to unload for them. (affiliate sales!).
c) I will let my neighbors know it might be a good time for them to hold a sale the same day.
d) I will place more signs in high traffic areas and will run a classified ad this time.
e) I might even use Craig's list to advertise the site (garage sales meet Web 2.0!).
f) And I definitely will have that lemonade stand out front. Goal: Forty dollars in refreshment sales!
What is your plan for your blog? Do you measure your traffic? Do you know what works and what doesn't?
Do you routinely rearrange your website based upon what your readership clicks?
Study your blogs stats and make appropriate changes. If possible, split test your site and take the better results.
A blog is only as good as the stats it generates and the changes which are based upon those findings.
If clutter in the home has you down, plan a garage (stoop, tag, rummage or yard) sale and shrink your material footprint and you might make some great spare change.
If your blog is going nowhere, think about revising, revamping and re-releasing using the garage sale plan and start building some great traffic and you might improve you page ranking a make some real money!
Thursday
Marketing Me! Squarespace
I recommend that everyone trying to market their own personal brand setup 1) a blog and 2) a website.
Not having either these days is like looking for a job without a phone, resume or business clothes.
Although I am not currently a customer of Squarespace, I have to say, after looking at their site, they have some of the best looking templates and examples I have ever seen.
Although I have been planning on migrating Marketing Me to Wordpress and seriously looking at Dreamhost (because of the one-button Wordpress install and good reviews) for my hosting account, I am considering putting a personal page on Squarespace simply because they have such incredibly good form and function.
Also, I am a big advocate of *good* support documentation. Squarespace has excellent tutorials and tips online.
Finally, check out some of the examples online. These are not your typical cheesy websites. They are all high-quality, well designed sites.
If I sign up with Squarespace, I will let you know if the customer experience is as nice as their website appears to be. I sure hope so!
Not having either these days is like looking for a job without a phone, resume or business clothes.
Although I am not currently a customer of Squarespace, I have to say, after looking at their site, they have some of the best looking templates and examples I have ever seen.
Although I have been planning on migrating Marketing Me to Wordpress and seriously looking at Dreamhost (because of the one-button Wordpress install and good reviews) for my hosting account, I am considering putting a personal page on Squarespace simply because they have such incredibly good form and function.
Also, I am a big advocate of *good* support documentation. Squarespace has excellent tutorials and tips online.
Finally, check out some of the examples online. These are not your typical cheesy websites. They are all high-quality, well designed sites.
If I sign up with Squarespace, I will let you know if the customer experience is as nice as their website appears to be. I sure hope so!
Monday
MyBlogLog
I have been playing with MyBlogLog all weekend.
I signed up right around the the time of the buyout by Yahoo which makes me dated I guess. But I have not seen anyone with a login older than summer 2006. Which means all the MBL "old timers" have vacated the premises or there simply were not that many users to begin with.
MBL is huge now. Everyone has that little window of visitors on their blog.
Great idea.
I signed up right around the the time of the buyout by Yahoo which makes me dated I guess. But I have not seen anyone with a login older than summer 2006. Which means all the MBL "old timers" have vacated the premises or there simply were not that many users to begin with.
MBL is huge now. Everyone has that little window of visitors on their blog.
Great idea.
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