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Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
Social Confidence Boot Camp
Matt Clower
- Think positively – the mind set going into any situation is key.
- Speak positive about what you’re doing and who you are.
- Embrace what is wonderful about you and connect with other people.
- Reinforce the good ideas, share what is awesome about you.
- Smile
- Accept compliments gracefully, do not shrug it off.
- Really insecure people approach others with a negative outcome, they expect the worst and socialize with people anxiously. Self assured people expect positive results. If you go into it expecting positive results, it’ll happen.
- Recognize your insecurities. What does that voice say in the back of your head when you go into a conversation you’re not comfortable with. What makes you ashamed of yourself.
- Matt suggests to write them down on cards, give them names, and address them. If you write them it brings it into the “real” and it’s something you can think through the truth about it, and it makes it tangible.
- Identify what makes you feel inferior and solve what you can and get over what you can’t.
- Focus on your successes instead. Focus on where you excel.
- Imagine you becoming what you imagine yourself to be.
- Remember, you are not your job.
- Be thankful. Take time to reflect on where you came from.
- Preparation – new client, new job situation.
- Learning the culture, and the style of who you’ll be interviewing with can be a big deal. It can change your mind set when you go into it. Identify things that the company, or that person, loves and enjoys. You want to make sure that you’re on the same visual communication as the people you’re meeting.
- Stalk where you’re going before you go
- Schedule your social life.
- Be a question asker
- See how long you can keep people going about their hobbies/passions. They’ll do all the talking
- No questions are dumb, just the ones never asked. They love it when you ask questions… Just, don’t talk too much.
- Think about the things you wished you knew at your old job, and ask them during your interview.
- But… you don’t have to change. Be who you really are. Love who you are, and you’ll know where you fit.
- It’s not about you. It’s about the company and what is it that you can bring to them.
- If you’re nervous about getting out there start with a group you’re comfortable with.
- Join toastmasters.com – it helps you with public speaking to large groups of people, and learning to listen to yourself. It’s not the perfect thing for everyone, but it’s great to join fr the experience.
- In comparision to other cities Phoenix is like an entrepreneurial community vs establishment
Recent Entries
Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
Are you a Technology Dinosaur?
Charlene from SocialMediaDIY
Self employed in Phoenix since 1995 with 15 years of working from her home office. She is not a gadget person and is constantly at work to not become a dinosaur.
- Tip 1: Fossilized email address – all the cool kids use Google, you should too
- It shows your comfort zone and you don’t want to stick out in a bad way.
- Gmail will let you blend in with everyone else. Almost all of the free ones are bad email addresses, and through your service provider. It’s all about perception, people view anything but a domain name and a Gmail address as old school. It doesn’t matter which one is the best, it matters which one is the more common. If you don’t want to stand out, that’s where you go.
- Set up a gmail.com account or an email through a custom domain name.
- Do not use a nickname, it’s not professional, unless it’s important to your business don’t use it.
- Tip 2: Don’t hide behind an old photograph and a fake persona. Don’t use a myspace-esque or dating service image, use a picture that really represents who you are. It doesn’t have to be glamorous, it has to be real. Get over yourself.
- Don’t include pictures of your pets, children, of you on the beach/landscapes
- Square format, not tall and skinny.
- Needs to be professional.
- It’ll show up on email, social networking sites (twitter, facebook, linkedin, blog commenting, etc), put in on your business card, and in peoples memories.
- Tip 3: Dusty paper resume. You are not your resume, and are more than your experience. It’s considered marketing collateral… people get too attached to that piece of paper as a representation of themselves. Your resume is just a map to show where you have been. Your self esteem needs to be focused on who you are and not tied into your resume.
- Use linkedin. Ask for and give out linkedin recommendations.
- Try creating a one page resume (which it should be anyway) and put at the bottom – see my full resume on linkedin.
- Tip 4: You have a paper address book. Build your digital network – use gmail or vyllij to manage those connections.
- People who know your work become people who will help you find job leads. Find people on linkedin but do not accept invitations from people you don’t know.
- Make sure to add people you meet through social media and events (email them to follow up that you met them! It helps keep you fresh in their memory)
- Use Twitter to get to know people, don’t use linkedin for that.
- Tip 5: Are you out of touch with your industry
- Read the bloggers (use an RSS feed) who are out there to stay in touch with trends and issues in your field – use places like alltop to find good bloggers, blog owners will often link to other influential bloggers in your industry.
- Spend at least 15 minutes a day keeping up with continuing your education.
- Get involved in trade or professional organizations. Get involved by showing up or volunteering.
- Tip 6: Blog
- It’s nice to say that you have experience on blogging, and understanding how to blog, and how blogging software can be an advantage to you, and your potential company.
- Don’t start a professional blog unless you have commitment (blog at least once a week), opinions, technical skills (or can find someone with those skills) and courage. Don’t start until you have at LEAST 50 topics – think diary entries and include photos/links. Start with a personal blog on hobbies/interests. It’s a great way to meet like minded people. If you blog about your passion it can take you on a journey you haven’t expected.
- Tip 7: Can’t text message? Uh oh…
- 4.1 billion messages per day JUST in the us. That’s 14 messages per person per day!
- Texting replaces talking in some situations – when you’re in a private place, in a meeting, etc.
- Tip 8: Leverage your community
- Coworking
- Meet up with people through tweetups, valley events, etc.
Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
Starting Your Small Business
Moderator – April
Panelists – Nikki, Brandon, Carly
April: If you could give people one word of advice what would it be?
- Nikki: Don’t do everything at once
- Carly: Keep the eagle vision, have the big picture, but come down to mouse vision where it’s what you can do right now today to keep on focus. No small step is small.
- April: Be as open and as clear as possible with life partners, friends, clients. Really take a good look at what absolutely has to happen right now to make this happen. What money do I need to save up; what kind of skill set do you want to do; have your goals objectified.
- Brandon: You’re never going to have everything perfect to just start your own freelance. You’re never going to be ready to just make the plunge. Just do it. Begin meeting people who can help you grow your business, be potential clients. Meet them outside of your work place asap. Tell all of your friends and family that you trust that it’ll happen and ask if they can help.
- April: Tell people even if you think people will steal your idea. You’ve the passion, not them. Even if there is competition, it’s still collaboration. More likely than not they’re willing to share their help and information.
- Nick: They’re not here to steal your idea, they’re here to help you. Pair up with people that are in the same field.
- Nikki: Have a positive support group
- Carly: Small business owners are a great support network. Great connections at networking events. Hello we’re all in the same boat.
- Nick: Business cards don’t even get pulled out, because people are wanting to build a relationship/connect with you on a collaborative effort. Find personal networking groups as it’s far healthier than the old school way of pulling out your business card to sell yourself.
- April: If the networking group is not your speed, find one that is so you can meet people.
- Carly: It’s only as authentic as you make it. You can make friends no matter where you show up even if you don’t like the group you attend. If you’re real you’ll meet real people.
- Brandon: If you haven’t been to networkingphoenix.com go there.
- Nick: Or eventification.com
- Sam: And meetup.com
- Carly: Yes, meetup.com is good for also just meeting people, because once you freelance you’ll want to meet people.
Attendee 1 Question: How do you share with people – friends, linkedin, etc – that you’re working and freelancing/own a business?
- Brandon: If you’re not starting a competing business you can start promoting, but you know the culture of your own company better than I do so you’d have to make a judgement call on posting it or not. It’s the people that know you that will be better reference at the beginning than posting it on linkedin.
- Carly: Is there anyone that you can ask as a 3rd party within your company?
- Attendee 2: I spout my knowledge, trying to create a network to show what I can do, but I’m not selling myself yet… and someday I will.
- Brandon: If I know what he does, and can vouch for him I’ll help him find clients, and I’ll support him.
- Attendee 2: Even if you’re not advertising it’s the people that you know that can help you out.
- Carly: It’s building a rapport, building a relationship and that’s what’s important.
April: Who wants to share what it is that they’re working on, or doing? (story time – some speakers stories are kept private but here are some take aways)
- Carly: If there is something that you’re supposed to be doing, something that you’re passionate about it’ll happen, and that’s why you can’t keep a job, because you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing.
- Attendee 3: Share some experiences and fears on doing this?
- Brandon: It was an incredibly nerve wracking thing, but I had confidence in the people that supported me and the people that I had connected with.
- April: I don’t call it fear anymore… I call it the hunger. I’m afraid that if I don’t make enough money I’m going to go hungry, that I’ll end up on the street. If you’re going to do this make a fear list – my boyfriend will leave me, I can’t pay rent, I can’t buy food – and look at why did that happen. If you see them it’s a warning sign, and when you realize those are there you can make steps to fix it. When I feel that I go to a networking meeting because I can walk away with a lead. When you see those things coming up, alleviate it by doing something that can correct it.
- Brandon: Things that caught me off guard: Insurance costs… I’m talking about bond insurance, liability insurance, short term disability, long term disability care… other marketing expenses like marketing, things that you don’t take into consideration when you’re ready to leave. Have a backup fund–
- April: Please for the love of God, have a backup fund. Do not live paycheck to paycheck. Just throw the money into an account where it can save up.
- Carly: Business plans are important…
- April: I work off a large goal – I want to do this by the end of the month, I want to do this by the end of the year. It can change month to month.
- Carly: And figure out what it is you can do to get there.
- Nikki: Be flexible because it needs to be fluid.
- Speaker 1: How do you find that focus, how do you figure out how to do it.
- Nikki: Focus on who your perfect client is. I know how to market and who to market and what services to offer when you realize who that perfect client is.
- Nick: After a while of working for certain types of clients you can help refocus and narrow down what it is you’re wanting to do you can refine your business plan.
April: Thanks guys!
Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
Sales for Small Business Owners
Chris Conrey from Integrum with Dave Cooke
- Sales in one word is relationships. The people that are doing the cold calling, the brow beating, the pushing is not building a relationship. It’s all about building a relationship with your client – sales is dating: it never gets better than this, but you still want to get married.
- Don’t chase deals that are bad, or is not a good relationship for you. Don’t get into bad relationships with clients just because they’ll sign a check.
- If a business knows that it’ll add value, they’ll hire you. Make them aware that you’ll create a solution and offer value to them. You can’t build value until you have a relationship.
- How do you know what people need.
- Spend the time to get to know them. You want to talk to them and build a rapport, trust, etc. Make it a “first date” – get to know them, learn what they want, like, how they talk/communicate. Learn how you can add value. Learning is the most important component to building a sales relationship. You want to discover what it is that you can do to help them. You need to be able to empathize and internalizing.
- You should be listening twice as much as you should be talking. It’s listening for the solution.
- Build value so they pay your prices. Don’t cut yourself off to lower prices and sacrifice value. Usually when you have to lower your prices, you haven’t established value for your product in the first place. The challenge is to differentiate yourself. Price is only a denominator, not a differentiating factor. Price is the last conversation, not the first. If you lower the price you’re lowering your integrity, credibility and value.
- Be a drug dealer – solve their pain. Keep asking why until you understand.
- What’s the pain
- What’s the impact it has on the business.
- What’s the result of fixing that and how will it effect their interest.
- Measure everything. EVERYTHING. It’ll help make a sales map.
- Track what you’re doing right so you know what to do more of, and track what you’re doing wrong so you know what not to do.
- Track leads coming in.
- Track people saying yes, and people saying no – find out WHY they’re saying no.
- Why I won a deal.
- Ask your clients why are they doing business with you.
- Stay disciplined. Make sure to stay on your road map. Make sure everyone is on the same page.
- If you tell someone a time frame… stick to that date! Do not miss it. It’s your integrity on the line. Make it time bound.
- Business development NEEDS to be 25% part of your work week. Make you your most important customer.
- Be Real. If you’re not yourself, if you lie, people will know. Do what you can do and make sure the people you’re selling to know that.
- If you don’t understand something it’s OK to ask them. Better to ask and know than not know.
- It’s OK to repeat things back to them, actually, make sure to do it so both parties understand what is wanted/needed.
- Make it Personal
- If they like coffee, bring them some. Google what they’re all about so you know them when you meet them. Work what they like, and what you know about them, into your conversations.
- Stop Selling. You’re not selling, you’re talking to them. Don’t pitch right away. Collaborate and listen.
- Don’t just take a business card. Ask the person offering a business card “woah, I’ve got tons… but why should I take yours.”
- If you tell them you’re not hear to sell something you have to live it because they won’t believe you. When they believe you they’ll open up to nearly everything – it becomes personal, a date, not business.
- Being you is the best sales tool.
Apr 5, 2010 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
Building Buzz for your Business
Wendy Kennedy
Launched her own business 23kazoos.com in April of last year – it’s close to making 6 figures.
Business owners have one huge challenge: you’ve got to figure out how to get the word out about your business so you can get customers.
Location and lowest price are myths.
Google Local Business Center and Google Maps are becoming huge – make sure to leverage it.
Yelp, citysearch, etc – it’ll create links to help you increase visibility within your
Do not use your real address – use a P.O.Box
Things you can to today to get the word out about your business:
- Visibility + Credibility = Profitability – the internet has become our yellow pages. You need to have a “blog site”. Websites are dead, don’t even have a website, have a blog site. 90% of businesses don’t have a website/blog site. Do people want to be sold or do they want to read your journal to get to know you. You don’t have to write a lot, make sure the paragraphs are good, don’t sell to people.
- This is why I blog: to build visibility + credibility, so those people that want to connect with me, can.
- Mistake: you’ve a blog site and the last time you posted was a year ago. If it’s not current people think you’re out of business. 65% of the population are visual learners – they gather information more easily through pictures/video.
- What is the number 1 thing people look for on the internet: they look for answers to their problem. Your website has to answer the questions your customers are asking. Just because you have one doesn’t mean it’ll get found. If you hire a designer don’t assume it’ll get found.
- Go to the major search engines and submit your site (um… you don’t have to anymore…)
- Google your business/a question your customers ask “where can I find…”
- Success in business is about the law of large numbers.
- The Clinton Principle – just show up, and go where the people are. Don’t drive traffic to your blog, go to where the people are.
- Get social! Use social media!
- Leverage facebook – it just beat Google as the largest search engine in the US. Use facebook ads. Make sure you have a facebook fan page.
- Twitter – if you follow people, they’ll follow you. Do not use your account to sell. Start intentionally connecting with influential people: media, small businesses, local groups, etc.
- Be generous. Give things away for free, or for cheap. Give it away for a while, just to give a little piece of what you do to build a name, to build credibility.
- The media, especially TV, is a black hole, and they need to fill it with news from people like us – business owners! A two minute segment on the news is FAR more influential than a two minute commercial – it will generate credibility, not leads.
- Go to news12, azcentral.com, find their contact information, and submit news worthy information.
- There is one marketing mistake that almost every business owner makes: Do not fail to follow up.
- Statistics show that a client will buy after SEVEN contacts with the company – twitter, commercials, TV, press releases, etc and most sales people give up after TWO times.
- Follow up with an email right away thanking them for the meeting, etc. Send any requested information right away, call them just to connect with them.
- Follow up with an email newsletter.
Jan 15, 2010 conference, sem, seo, social media
I’m in the audience for January’s Social Media Club (I’m live blogging). While I’m seated around rather amusing people that are snickering and having a good time with the live twitter feed (not that I haven’t been as well. Good lord it’s been hard to focus) I’ve been learning some good information about how to leverage facebook… especially now that facebook has their new algorithm.
As I am sure most of you have seen facebook’s new Live Feed. Basically it allows you to see the most active friends, groups and pages within your own personal feed. It limits it to 200-250ish items… so if you’ve a friend or an item that doesn’t update often they won’t be seen as much in your stream. You can change between Live Feed and News Feed but be warned the Live Feed does not list things chronologically.
The majority of the discussion has been about leveraging facebook for business to consumers. Here are some notes that I’ve taken… though I am hoping to get my hands on the official notes from the evening.
Three great pages to
Facebook – Sephora
Facebook – Mint
Facebook – Grockit
the algorithm doesn’t have a rank, but the post/item has a rank as well.
you want a simple question “yes, no, do you agree with this.” “finish this statement – if i could have bought one thing from 2009 what would it be….” You don’t want to ask people a question that requires people to click through.
you’re competing to get into their newsfeed, not against other companies.
facebook is the post modern email newsletter
if you’re not doing facebook advertisements you should. use the engagement advertisement, not just the one to get you friends
interactions are more important than fan count – and is on its way out.
you want to post less often on facebook than on twitter – only once to twice a day
we think they’re going to focus on the small business. the new yellow pages
facebook is not allowing contests unless it is approved by facebook. you can’t do one on facebook that requires people to upload information. Facebook doesn’t want you to give away material things.
facebook is for branding, not selling. They do better if they get involved in being social.
make sure to use a url tracking site (bit.ly, etc). PLUS if you use the same URL through bit.ly put a + sign at the end of the link and it’ll show you the tracking information on it. You can use the + sign trick on any bit.ly link and it’ll work.
use the @ tag (@username/group/page) and it gives you the ability to identify and reference people in photos, videos and notes.
Oct 26, 2009 conference, laidoffcamp, sem, seo, social media
This past week was the beginning of conference season here in Phoenix. I feel rather proud being able to say that.
Phoenix conference season.
I’m used to hearing how it’s conference time in California, New York… Chicago… London… and now it’s happening here. In Phoenix. It makes me so excited. It’s been a long time in coming and it’s fabulous to see designers in the industry really taking the lead on creating large events.
Perhaps large marketing conferences will come here, too. Like SES… or SMX… Ah… a girl can dream.
It started off with the first (and hopefully not last) Phoenix Design Week that ended last night – posts to come soon. It was a huge success and a great kick off to the conference season. Within the coming months there is TEDx Phoenix, Wordcamp, Podcamp, Geekweek, Ignite Phoenix 5 and more.
seopenguin is attending a lot of the conferences in the next few months and look forward to blogging/live blogging them. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there.
Sep 28, 2009 personal
More than 125 local artists and musicians will be sharing their talent at the 4th Sunnyslope Art Walk on Saturday, October 10, from 5 – 9 p.m. Artists and musicians will be set up in various parking lots along Central Avenue between Dunlap and the Canal. Click here for a map.
Art ranges from the eclectic (like the popular Sock Zombies and sci-fi inspired sculpture) to the modern (like architectural furniture) and fine art (like painting and photography)
Musicians include: Jimmy Peyton’s Midnite Blues, Los Compadres Jazz, Insinceros, Todd Miller, Surf Duo, Steelin’ the Night Away, Decades Too Late, Jaleo, Honey Pistol and more!
Immediately following the Art Walk, head over to 8801 for the first ever “On the Wall” Film Festival, a truly non-sanctioned film for film sake event… and it’s projected on a wall (the wall at 8801 N. Central Avenue)! While the art walk is a free event, admission to the film festival is a $2.50 donation. Proceeds benefit myxMedia and Studio303. Both are nonprofit arts and education organizations. Local student filmmakers will exhibit a variety of shorts. These films are unrated.
via Sunnyslope W.I.N.S Community
Aug 24, 2009 seo
In five months I’ll be five.
Well, a five year old Internet Marketer. I’ve been a part of the internet movement for a lot longer; I’ve been coding and designing since before table layouts were popular, when web-rings were still all-the-rage and I remember using Yahoo! as my main search engine because Google was still infant trying to make it’s way in the world.
Which, it was slowly doing as it wormed its way through an underground of users, collecting more and more sites for it’s search engine directory. Yahoo! was still the predominate search engine; they had already acquired AltaVista and were using them to help bolster the search index they’d already created. There was a search engine battle coming, the mass of people just didn’t realize it would be a newcomer that would emerge victorious.
At the time I was addicted to design. I drew layouts in history class and code on my math homework (it was math, honest!) I attended a design college, geeking out over the latest design trend and feeling as if I and my contemporaries would revolutionize the face of web design.
As luck would have it I attended as guest speaker event where Search Engine Marketing was covered. It was a 45 minute class and rather rudimentary. It was 2004, Yahoo! was it’s own search engine again after having taking back it’s search engine results from Google. MSN was using Yahoo! as its search results provider and was eying Google, who was beginning to monopolize the industry. Directories were heavily utilized as were doorway page and keyword spamming; Ask Jeeves walked on scene and local search came into town. That was just the tip of the iceberg. Video search/media search and desktop search came out. In March an event that would change the face of searching rolled out: Personalized Search.
45 minutes changed my life, it would just take another four months before I realized it.
I graduated and started in a web design company within weeks: January 2, 2005 actually. I had no problems with designing and coding, still enamored with the lofty goal of design revolution. All I wanted to do was make the web a prettier place. A client had heard about this up-and-coming tactic called Search Engine Optimization. Seizing the opportunity was easier than I thought.
“Does anyone here know anything about something called SEO?”
I contemplated my reply. I had really only had 45 minutes worth of knowledge, something I mulled over in my head for about 5 seconds before shyly raising my hand, “Yes, I know what SEO is.”
I suppose the rest they say is history.
Jan 28, 2008 seo
a few days ago i posted a question in the google section of cr8asite forums regarding a client and a key term.
this client has PPC and for a while had been asking why they’re not showing up in the yellow sponsored box. for a few months this was a complete mystery to me and have expressed that to this client on a few occasions. Read More..
