MartyBLOGs is one of the latest recipients of the Lemonade Award. Deb Sistrunk at Media By Sistrunk graced me with the honor last week so let me tell you a little about it.
The Lemonade Award recognizes sites that show great attitude and/or gratitude. Thanks again Deb for thinking so highly of me.
Now it is my turn to honor ten sites. But first, here are the rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate at least 10 blogs that show great attitude and/or gratitude.
3. Be sure to link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know that they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Nominate your favorites, and link to this post.
I have certainly been trying to. Maybe I can help you out with some of my methods. I have been adding and deleting groups over the last few days. I now have distinctly more groups focused on the categories of animation, cinema and entertainment. This is intentionally to attract that crowd for job offers and project collaboration offers while in school and after graduation. Many of the rest represent other interests.
The marketing and open networking groups aren’t as relevant to me now as when building up my contact list. I still keep a couple of groups related to those areas because a good contact can come from anywhere. However now that I have a critical mass of contacts I can probably do O.K. without a couple of those original groups. So I got rid of a few of those types and added more of the direct career related variety.
Now I’m at a point where I can put some much needed time into perusing each group in detail for members who’s goals seem closely aligned to my own. I’m bound to find some interesting discussions to comment on as well. I’m counting on this tack to be an effective strategy to mutual benefit to myself and potential contacts. It early indications of my prospecting are an indication then this should work out great for business opportunities relatively quickly.
My key groups to research further at this point are all animation and illustration specific. I’ll keep you posted on how the strategy works and share with you as time goes on. We’ll see if my speculations are confirmed. In the mean time remember the earlier tips. Max out your fifty groups in what ever categories interest you. Once you start getting the daily or weekly feeds from the groups, that will give you an idea of whether or not you want to continue your membership with a given group. Then let the fine tuning begin.
Click on my profile button to the left for ideas. Then share with the rest of us and tell us how you’re maximizing your LinkedIn strategy.
That was the title of my pastor’s Men’s Day sermon last Sunday. The answer of course is a resounding yes. In Ephesians 4: 22-24 Paul talks about how this change is brought about. We do it with God’s help. It’s not in our power but in His. Amen!
If you get a few minutes before you hit the sack tonight take a gander at these verses before you say your prayers. And maybe Sunday morning you can mix it into your Sunday school discussion and be tuned into the Spirit that much more during services.
Be sure to read all thirty two verses of the chapter to understand the full context of Paul’s instruction and be blessed by the entire perspective of what he was teaching in this particular section of the book.
Or take a listen to the narration provided from the site. I’m listening to it as I type. It’s impressive. Just click on the “Listen” button at the bottom of your verse search page whenever you find what you’re looking for.
And what do you want to do after a hard day at work? You want to break out! Swing Out Sister shows you how they were doing it back in 1987. This was a bonafide rock/R & B cross over hit. Take a listen or sing along with the lyrics and you’ll see why.
When explanations make no sense
When every answer’s wrong
You’re fighting with lost confidence
All expectations come
The time has come to make or break
Move on don’t hesitate
Breakout
Don’t stop to ask
Now you’ve found a break to make at last
You’ve got to find a way
Say what you want to say
Breakout
When situations never change
Tomorrow looks unsure
Don’t leave your destiny to chance
What are you waiting for
The time has come to make your break
Breakout
Don’t stop to ask
Now you’ve found a break to make at last
You’ve got to find a way
Say what you want to say
Breakout
Don’t stop to ask
Now you’ve found a break to make at last
You’ve got to find a way
Say what you want to say
Breakout
Some people stop at nothing
If you’re searching for something
Lay down the law
Shout out for more
Breakout and shout day in day out
Breakout
Breakout
Don’t stop to ask
Now you’ve found a break to make at last
You’ve got to find a way
Say what you want to say
Breakout
Don’t stop to ask
Now you’ve found a break to make at last
You’ve got to find a way
Say what you want to say
Breakout
Lay down the law
Shout out for more
Breakout and shout day in day out
Breakout
Breakout
Breakout
Lay down the law
Shout out for more
Breakout and shout day in day out
—————————————
You feel better already don’t you? And guess what? It’s Friday and a few hours from now you can bop right on out the door with this tune in your head. Just don’t let the boss catch you.
Who’s ready to take a break? Me too. Here’s a mid-day jam from One Way to get you re-energized for the rest of the day.
Oh yeah. Another bass jam from way back that I could play all day long. Save it in your YouTube favorites and pull it out whenever you need a good funk infusion.
If you haven’t tried Amazon.com’s associates system you should consider creating an account and trying it out. They have some really good tools that could possibly help your monetization efforts pay off if you have good readership on your site. For the uninitiated, monetization is blog-speak for making your blog site an income generator.
I’ve been toying around with some of the simpler and more advanced Amazon features today and I think I’ve come up with an arrangement that I like. There’s an assortment of Widgets and Links & Banners you can install on your page. Then there’s the aStore. It’s the shopping cart that you can customize and add to your site in either of three configurations.
In fact my aStore is the Marty’s Amazon Store tab at the top of the page. I chose the standalone option that links out to a separate browser tab and gives you a full page shopping cart to push around the virtual store. When you go to the Marty’s Amazon Store tab you’ll see the link that you can click to actually go to the store. Go ahead and try it out. Tell me what you think.
I also added a customized book widget, a gift card banner and a vertical banner. Here’s how they work.
The customized widget option allows you to pick from a set of pre-sized widgets or you can customize the size and the recommended selections that show in the box. You’ll see a couple of good choices that I’m recommending initially from Steve Harvey and Voddie Baucham, Jr. Since it’s a file that’s saved in my Amazon account I can go in and add or delete book selections as I choose.
Then I’ve made life easy for my readers who are bad shoppers like me. Have no idea what your gift recipient would like? No problem pally. Send them a gift card. You’ll find this option under Links and Banners -Banners-Add Banners Now-Gift Cards. Pick your favorite banner link and drop the code into your site.
And you can add a scrolling banner too. I added a vertical banner that makes recommendations based on the content of the site. Amazon obviously has a serious artificial intelligence algorithm that feeds in its suggestions to the banner to pique your readers interests.
Of course you’re not limited to the category of books. Amazon sells just about everything online. It just happens to be what I like to focus on. Should I be more expansive? Tell me what you think. I really am open to suggestion, especially if you’re already good at monetization. For those of us who are just now truly trying to get on the good foot with this I don’t think you can go wrong trying some of these suggestions for starters.
If you’re looking for more readers for your blog use the captive audience you already have. Facebook (FB) and LinkedIn (LI) already allow you to write in links under your profile so you should be listing your blog sites there at a minimum if you haven’t already.
Facebook allows a seemingly unlimited number of URL’s that you can type in the Information section under the Contact Information tab of the profile section. The “Websites:” text field is at the bottom of the section and you can type away. The sites show up under your profile so your facebook friends can click the links at will. Just click on the little pencil icon in the Information box under your profile picture and that will open up the editing section to enter your site addresses.
On a basic LinkedIn account you can list three URLs max. The sequence of mouse clicks is Profile-Edit My Profile-Websites-Additional Information-Edit. You can categorize the type of site from the drop down menu of each URL text box. I only have two sites listed but I’ll probably add my amazon site as the third here and try to get more books moving (smile).
So those are the basics but there are even more effective ways to use each account and that’s the true emphasis of this post. Here’s the advanced class on drawing greater attention to your blog and potentially scaling up your reader numbers.
Use facebook’s “Notes” feature to your advantage. I noticed this recently when one of my facebook friends used it to distribute a meme. Well you can also use Notes to import your external blog. Every time you post something it will also feed into your Notes application so your facebook friends can read your blog entries. If they have never gone to your blog site before, now you can potentially hook them at a glance. Here’s the set up. Settings-Application Settings-click the Notes icon. In the column that displays to the right you’ll see a heading that reads “Notes Settings” and under that is the “Edit import settings >>” link. Clicking that link takes you to the “Import a Blog” tab and that’s where you enter your blog feed address. Voila! Now your FB friends know what a talented writer you are.
On LinkedIn the setup is a little different. I have a WordPress blog so that’s the example I’ll use. Under “Edit My Profile” there’s an “Applications” section. Click on “Add Applications” and pick the WordPress icon. From there complete all the details and voila once again, you’ve got a feed into your LinkedIn profile so all your professional connections can get a sense of your blog writing talents and possibly become regular readers and commenters. I’m not sure if LI offers this feature for other platforms so you may have to research it some or even send them a request to add yours if you don’t find it as an option.
If there’s any part of your virtual arsenal that’s worth loading up on this week it is these two features. Give at least an hour to each. It is well worth the tune up for your profiles so let’s get to it and expand your platform.
This week’s theme for the Old School Friday meme is songs with the word “baby” in the lyrics. Well my choice is from the Purple Man, Prince Rogers Nelson, and it starts off with “Baby, baby, baaa-by”. The song? “The Beautiful Ones”.
I always thought this song was waaaaay cool. Prince covers his full range from falsetta to low tenor in this piece. His dynamic vocal changes add emphasis at just the right times through out the piece.
What really made the song so entirely cool is the melodic way that Prince pours his heart out to some girl telling her what he really means and how he really feels about her. This was one of those fantasy songs for guys like me who were actually mush mouths and fraidy cats when it came to talking to girls in high school. I always pictured myself crooning this one to the fine chicks in my mind though.
If you really think about it he’s giving the girl a type of ultimatum. He can’t take it anymore and wants to know where she stands so he’s telling her very clearly where he’s coming from. And he’s doing it like it was perfectly alright for a dude to to lay it on the line honestly like it was all or nothing for this one-and-only honey dip who had him in the palm of her hand – if she would have him and him alone.
The orchestration of the song was tight too. It pulls you in with that understated, rambling, mid tempo drum beat intro with the space agey sound effect weaved into it and the tinkling high octave piano line laid in on top of it that leads into the first verse.
The last line ties it all up when he tells her how it has to be: “Do you want him? (guitar and keyboard crescendo) Or do you want me? (drums pulling up and adding to the crescendo) Cuz I want you! (synthesizers filling out the flourish)”. Hey repeats this line with a couple extra verses thrown in for emphasis and then it ends with the same easy groove that introduced the song. Man, for my money, it is still one of the best rock/R&B endings in pop music history .
Unfortunately Prince’s people have pulled all of his stuff off YouTube (What’s another source for clips people?) so here are some guys who try to give you a feel of this classic from the Purle Rain album from 1985 if I recall correctly.
By that I specifically mean, how close to the top of the search are you when someone Google’s your name? My bloginess and virtualness is improving. As of this day, Friday, March 13, 2009, here’s how I’m looking.
My URL www.martinlindsey.com is #1. Even got somebody specing me a price to work on giving it some updated content in the near future. It’s going to become a practical tool for me once again. I bet there are a bunch of other Martin Lindsey’s out there who were slow purchasing the domain wondering, “Why is this guy blowing a perfectly good URL?!?!”. To that I say, Dr. Evil style, “muwahaha!, whahaha!, muwahahahaaa!!!”
My blog, MartyBLOGs, is #3. Not posting on my own site or commenting on others nearly as much as I should. Maybe when I get back into full time school mode again in the fall I can throw in some more consistent bloggy activity during the school day. Social networking is taking up the majority of my online time these days in prep for the big move of course.
My LinkedIn profile is #4. Not surprising since I’ve been doing a considerable amount of networking with it including building up my contact list to 250+ and making some actual practical contacts. I’ve mostly focused on fellow computer scientists, digi-artists and arts patrons many of whom will comprise my next professional life.
Actually there are a bunch of us Martin Lindsey’s from around the world at that #4 LinkedIn position. So if you want to be sure to nab my profile on a search, it’s the indentation under the general listing. (So does that really make me 4-1/2? O.K. I’m thinking too hard now.)
I assume my facebook account is helping too since we can add web links to it. Hopefully people are clicking those links and finding out what else I’m into. And similarly on my LinkedIn profile. The only link I’ve neglected is my amazon.com seller’s account Legacy Book Sellers so I’m adding that where ever there’s space in all those other spots.
These are just a few ideas that seem to be working for me. Try them out for yourself for practical effect. Network your networks and see if you can’t make all your web ships rise together.
O.K. Everybody drop what you’re doing and check out what Chris Davis has going in Columbus, Ohio. He is a fellow Toastmaster who specializes in technology and communication. We’re obviously cut from the same cloth so I can’t think of a better type of person to have helped me reach this milestone in building my virtual professional network. Read more about Chris through the LinkedIn link above and send him an invite request.
So now you see why you should join Toastmasters International and create a LinkedIn profile right? Just look at how Chris has leveraged his communication and leadership skills to become a successful business owner. No reason you can’t do the same or similar, with your particular life objectives.
Chris and I belong to the Public Speaking Network and the Black Data Processing Associates groups on LinkedIn. There are literally hundreds of common interest groups you can join to network with like minded people. LinkedIn is by far the premier forum for the entire world to beat a path to your door and pay you to help improve their lives. It’s all about helping the other guy and this is the perfect way to begin doing that.
No excuses people. Let’s make it happen. And now, on to 500+ connections!
