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Archive - June, 2010

Reflections and Reviews of Junes Gone By

By Mike Sansone on June 30, 2010 in Blog Coach, Social Media with 0 Comments

At the turn of the calendar, let's revisit some posts of this and past Junes:

June 2010

Using Archives to Create a Slide Deck – and a Speaking Career: Take your titles, headlines, or money quotes and turn them into slide decks to kick start your public speaking
Your Blog Categories are Like a Table of Contents: 3-4 posts per month in each category. Your categories will tell first time visitors and readers what they can expect.
Another Conversation (Argument?) with my Blog: I often have conversations with my blog – on this post it almost became an argument
Your Back of the Baseball Card Stories: Your backroom and personal history stories are as important and as cool as your present business. And often, you can bring it into your business story.
Using Backtweets to Track your Content on Twitter: How to rack your web track traffic on Twitter even if your URL is truncated.

June 2009

Pretty much nuth for the month. Wonder what I was doing that kept me so busy?

June 2008

More Knowledge + Less Time = Smart Infosumption: How to synchronize your incoming and outgoing comms.
Are Computer Labs a Crutch?: Did we have a pencil lab? Are some teachers dumping kids off on a "computer sitter?"
Don't Judge a Blog by its Genre: There are so many types of books, and so many ways social media can be used. There are probably genres of books you don't read. Doesn't mean books are bad. Same with blogs, hmm?

June 2007

My Kidney's Failure: Some great comments and patients for this patient. Still feeling the gratitude.
Night Driving – Can You See the Destination? Be joyous in the journey, because even with bright lights on — we seldom see the destination clearly.
Blog Posting Mantra #4 is a Guideline: Link, baby, link. Extend the conversation OUT.
Self Awareness Test – What's Your Business Blogging Level:Nice little test – still works.

June 2006

What Makes a Blog Different Series: The four-part series is linked as a whole from the bottom of the post.
A Day in the Life: Juggling the Clock: Tools have changed, clockwork – not so much.
Comments – Long Posts Should be Blog Posts: I still coach this tip as a success point (and always link back)

One-Hour Web-inizing: Simple Pages for the Mini-Business

By Mike Sansone on June 30, 2010 in Marketing with 1 Comment

I'm hitting the road today for a mini-business study. I'm going to be going through small rural Midwest towns looking for businesses without a web presence.

I believe it's so easy and inexpensive to get on the web, at least with a single page and a domain name, that there is no longer an excuse not to be "on the web." A few years ago, a study came out saying 30% of small businesses were yet on their own web page. I hope that's changed, but I'm not so sure — especially in rural areas.

Merchant's Circle offers a great solution (one every small business should take advantage of in addition to their own site). And there is Google Local that can help support a web "presence." But what of a small company's own web presence?

Well, I'll be traveling around small town squares with my li'l red wagon (and laptop) building one-hour web pages and testing out theories. Almost like One-Hour Web-inizing.

Update: We just did two tests. The first test, it took an hour to put up a single web page with store info, contact, custom banner, a bit of content on history and present offerings, and two photos (inside and outside). The second test was a simpler page — took 25 minutes.

Update II: Success! Of the dozen or so businesses we approached, a handful weren't on the web or didn't care to be there. A signal to me there is still a need for affordable solutions to the mini-businesses or small rural companies. We also met with Susie at Pappy's Antique Mall – our first web-inizing customer. In and Out in an Hour (or so). The one-hour webinizing might become a weekly thing (I dig the people and the food on the back roads. Lots of gems!)

Video clips at eleven?

Photo on Flickr by Gavin St. Ours

Whistle Stops: 06/27/10

By Mike Sansone on June 27, 2010 in Whistle Stops with 0 Comments

Whistle Stops are conversations, eye-openers, or tools representing the
brain train discovered while traveling along the Conversphere. From
business to education, life hacks to giving back, these are the posts and
links that have in some way grabbed my attention!

27 Hot Summer Reads for Speakers at Six Minutes: I just added a bunch of titles to my Kindle. Now if we can have a post entitled 27 more hours a week….

Essential HTML You Should Know at Web Distortion: The aligning images portion alone is worth the read.

How to Manage Your Social Media Marketing in 10 Minutes Daily at Social Media Examiner: Start with No. 1…and remember, nobody ever gets to step No. 2 without paying attention to No. 1

The Ultimate Social Media Glossary by HubSpot: Ultimate is a great descriptor. This is one to save, scour and check back with often as terms will be added (and terms and tools continue to come out of the cloud as often as it rains in the Midwest these days)

Happy Conversations and Connections

Let’s Bring it Home…Do Your Posts Sum You Up?

By Mike Sansone on June 25, 2010 in Blog Coach with 0 Comments

Bring it. From your gut. Give it to us from your pivot. Your Content Oomph.

Once that starts coming out? You'll never run dry.

Clip from Walk the Line via MovieClips.com

Execute Often

By Mike Sansone on June 25, 2010 in Blog Coach with 0 Comments

Every post, every tweet, every image or video uploaded … matters.

Especially when they add value to others.

Even short ones in the long run.

Execute often.

Photo on Flickr by Maki_C30D (awesome photostream!!)

Using Archives to Create a Slide Deck — and a Speaking Career

By Mike Sansone on June 23, 2010 in Blog Coach, Marketing with 0 Comments

If you've been blogging for awhile, you have lots of great content to pull from to make a presentation deck for "lunch-and-learn" types of speaking engagements. You can also create the "decks" to share on SlideShare or individual slides on Flickr by using an image and the Post Headline or "money quote" within a post.

Once you've repurposed the content for use online, contact your local chambers of commerce, and other professional development associations to ask if they are looking for speakers. Just 10-20 slides will give you a great foundation for a presentation — and who knows, you may just kick-off a side source of income speaking, or better yet, create a new customer base — all by repurposing content already published on your blog.

I recently did this exercise and forgot that I had written a series on "Fears of Blogging" several years ago. I'm turning that into a new slide deck and presentation.

One other thing you can do with your archives, especially if you've been blogging since pre-Twitter days, is to share those archives occasionally on Twitter – maybe with a "From the Archives" within the tweet.

Give it a shot. Let me know how it works out for you.

Brunch n Brains: Which Creative Type Are You?

By Mike Sansone on June 22, 2010 in Brain Stew with 0 Comments

Long and sometimes heavy on text (not normally my cup of look-see), this stack (larger than a deck) is worth every click. It's an idea igniter!

Go Slow (slower). Download it and save it. If it isn't already, it should be an ebook book.

The Creative Method v2

View more presentations from Jason Theodor.

Follow more JTed creativity elsewhere
- Jason Theodor's blog site
- JTed on Twitter

Whistle Stops: 06/20/10

By Mike Sansone on June 20, 2010 in Whistle Stops with 0 Comments

The Editorial SEO Checklist at Conversation Marketing: It's old SEO stuff, but common (un?) sense stuff such as writing with the reader in mind. Ten solid tips
11 Helpful Cheat Sheets for Google Products at Web Design Ledger: Some great cheats, shortcuts and I-didn't-know-you-could-do-that tips for several different Google apps we use daily. (HT to iLibrarian)
10 Big Blogging Mistakes at SmartBloggerz: And there are a couple of them I continue to make (and I know you are whiffing on a couple or so two, so…)
8 Speechwriting Lessons You Can Learn from Songwriters at Six Minutes: Some fantastic tips for speakers and teachers in this post. Pick one and employ it, it's make you better and your audience will enjoy it.
10 Important Technology Infographics at NowSourcing: Infographics are all the rage right now…and here's 10 more worth knowing

Have a great Sunday afternoon. Happy Father's Day