Holy-fagioli! Why did it take me so long to discover TwitMe? I’ve been blogging for years. I’ve been on Twitter for years too. So how did this cool little plugin escape my attention. No clue but I’m glad I’m finally with the program.
TwitMe is a handy little WordPress plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically on Twitter. I used to do that manually and it really doesn’t take long but I also plan a few days of posts in advance and always had to ping Twitter with those posts manually. Sometimes I would forget. With TwitMe, I won’t have to worry about it anymore.
The application took seconds to install and a minute or two to configure. My first posts worked like a charm. I had set up some posts to publish while I was away for New Year’s weekend and they pinged Twitter automatically within seconds of being published on my blogs. How cool is that?
I’ll be posting a video tutorial on how to install and configure TwitMe in a few days but couldn’t wait to share my excitement over this uber-cool plugin.
I’m a fingerstyle guitar enthusiast! So much so that I volunteer to write the Toronto Fingerstyle Guitar weekly newsletter. I’ll post my articles here for your musical pleasure. Be sure to check us out online at http://www.fingerstyleguitar.ca This article was originally printed in May 2008.
I’m in awe of anyone who has ever composed a piece of music. Take tonight’s feature performer, Wendell Ferguson, for example. I have one of his CDs and it tickles me pink every time I hear it.
It’s brilliant - the lyrics are hilarious, the complexity of the rhythms and melodies are inspiring and I’m jealous of the seeming ease with which it seems he flows from one song to another. In fact, the last time I saw Wendell play, he told a story of having written a fingerstyle guitar piece to honor the memory of the great Chet Atkins, only a year after he had started plying fingerstyle guitar.
Wow!! Sheer genius. Pure creativity.
Now don’t get me wrong, I consider myself fairly creative. I write. I build websites. I sing. I’m an amateur photographer. But I’m an accidental creative. I see flashes of brilliance and am sometimes able to capture these fleeting moments and record them for posterity. But I have yet to harness my creative juices into something I can control and bascially sit and wait for the flashes of brilliance that sometimes never come.
So when I’m faced with an original composition, a question always pops to mind - how did they do it? Do they struggle like I do and drag themselves out of bed to write it down before it’s forgotten or are the able to sit down and compose at will?
I don’t know but I do know this: I learn as much by listening to musicians like Wendell as I do by writing my own. And who knows, maybe if I surround myself with brilliance, the creative juices will increase their flow.
Happy New Year! Hard to believe we’re already well into the thick of things for the New Year. My week has already been busy helping clients implement their business goals for 2009 as well as getting into action on some of my own.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be releasing my long-awaited Customer Care program as well as my brand new one-on-one training program. I know many of you have studied with the best online business teachers and are well on your way to building a profitable online business. But you get stuck at times and need a little one-on-one training to get over the bump.
If you want to learn how to install a shopping cart, put a squeeze page online or build a blog, or do any of the technical tasks you need to complete to run your online business, then keep your eye out for the opportunity to get customized training from yours truly. Be sure to follow me on Twitter as I’m most likely to tweet about it often.
How about you? What are your goals for the New Year and how can I help support you? Pop me a note on Facebook or Twitter and let me know.
I received the same message from another online entrepreneur a few months ago and thought I’d post it here and put my spin on it.
If you’re not using social media to expand your network, find long lost friends, grow your business, and just have fun reaching out…you’re missing the boat!
I want to get acquainted with you personally. I want to laugh and giggle and share the ups and downs of running an online business and get to know a little about who you are. And these tools let us do just that, really. The line between business and personal is fading and no where is that more evident than in the world of social networking.
And if you’re already “dialed in”…then please search for me and let’s meet, asap!
Here are two great social media tools that I use daily and I want you to use so we can all get connected & I’ll provide tips on how to use these to grow your business, too:
FACEBOOK: It’s free. Go to www.facebook.com and open an account. You can connect to me directly by simply searching for “Deborah Carraro ” when your account is established. More important, you will be able to find tons of old friends, business contacts, and new associates very quickly. Remember all the peeps that shunned you in high school? You’ll be surprised by how many of them want to connect with you now.
TWITTER: It’s free and seriously fun. It’s also seriously addictive. It’s a service for friends, associates and co-workers to say connected and informed based on a simple question, “What are you doing?” But it’s really more than that! Go to www.twitter.com and open an account. You can connect to me directly by simply searching for “Deborah Carraro ” when your account is established or linking directly to my profile at http://twitter.com/deborahcarraro
There are more but those are the two I would recommend that you start with. So let’s connect this week. Hope to tweet you soon!
We can argue until we’re blue in the face why Obama won over McCain last week…
Things like making cultural history…the sliding popularity of the previous Republican administration…McCain’s controversial choice of Sara Palin as a running mate…they all hold water in this debate. But the BIGGEST reason was SOCIAL MARKETING.
Night before last the world, together, was given a renewed sense of hope.
It doesn’t matter where you’re from, what you believe in, who you voted for as an American. Some moments bring the world together and that was one of them.
Whether or not you agree with all of President Elect Barack Obama’s policies, you probably agree with the message he gave the world in his acceptance speech: peace, liberty, and hope for the future …
Those are ideas we can *all* get behind.
What really makes me hopeful is that I live in a time where great information from true visionaries can make its way to so many people - all through the power of technology.
For example …
Tonight at 8PM Eastern Mark Joyner’s “Kaizen Club” goes live:
If you don’t know Mark, you should … He has been referred to as “one of the most important minds of the 21st century” by news agencies and scholars and his books are read throughout the globe in 20 different languages.
What Mr. Joyner is offering there fits perfectly with this wonderful moment in history.
Kaizen is, in fact, about hope. It is a system of changing your life that is so easy and unstoppable that it’s hard not to be filled with optimism.
If you haven’t yet read the back story (and the hundreds upon hundreds of responses from people), check out the blog: http://tinyurl.com/6mam7x
I’m back with another video tutorial. This time we’ll be taking a look at how to create a Google AdWords campaign. We’ll learn the difference between a campaign and an ad group as well as learn how to set up your campaign so that it maximizes your exposure and potential traffic. I’ll also be sharing some great tips on how to write your ad and what should be included in each line.
To view the video, click play on the player below.
I’m a fingerstyle guitar enthusiast! So much so that I volunteer to write the Toronto Fingerstyle Guitar weekly newsletter. I’ll post my articles here for your musical pleasure. Be sure to check us out online at http://www.fingerstyleguitar.ca This article was originally printed in May 2008.
This week’s article is a little personal. By now, you’ve all heard about the changes at the TFGA/fingerstyleguitar.ca. And you’ve also heard about the exciting volunteer opportunities available within the new organization. So I thought this week, I’d share with you why I volunteer.
Oddly enough the day I started writing this article, I was at an Open Stage event and Noah asked me the same question. There’s a saying in the customer service field that for every question you receive, there are nine others thinking the same thing and too shy to ask. So for the other nine inquiring minds…
I don’t know if I have one dominant reason why I’m involved with Fingerstyleguitar.ca.
I volunteer because I love music. Anyone who is a regular reader of this newsletter knows that music gets my mojo going. It inspires me. It comforts me. It gets me through the major and minor events of my life. It keeps me company when I’m working, or travelling or getting my sweat on at the gym. It’s like the song in that iPod commercial: music is my imaginery friend, my brother, my sister… my boyfriend
Okay - you get it, I love music. But I also love sharing my enthusiasm (i.e. quirkiness or as Mark Sepic kindly put it quasi-science obsession) with others who share the same passion. And the TFGA lets me do that at least once a week.
I volunteer with the newsletter because I love to write. I’m still working on my dream of writing the next Great Canadian novel. In the meantime, I get a kick out of having a captive audience who eagerly awaits my prolific prose every Monday (hey… a girl can dream, can’t she!).
But mainly I volunteer because I’m a closet Rock Star Wannabe and love the celebrity status that comes part and parcel of being the TFGA It Girl… known only by my first name like Cher or Madonna (though I’m considering changing my name to a treble clef and becoming “The Writer Formerly Known As Deborah”).
In all honesty, I volunteer because I can. Because I have (or think I have) certain talents and skills to contribute to a fantastic organization that gives me more than I give it.
Every time I attend an open stage or sit in the audience at a Main Stage Concert, I’m left with the unshakeable feeling that I’ve just witnessed genius unfold - in living colour - right before my eyes - and I want to be a part of spreading the magic.
There’s nothing like the power of live music. The notes are richer, performances more heartfelt. Ultimately I volunteer to do my part to ensure that there’s always a live perfomance to attend because, after all, you won’t get this on YouTube. Nothing compares to a live performance and I need your help to ensure that nothing ever will.
One of my longest client relationships is with a client whom is a fairly successful Online Business Entrepreneur. He recently took an extended leave of absence from his business and is now back in the swing of things. He’s having a tough time getting back to business and I’ve been challenged to keep him on target and on focus. One of the challenges we’re facing is having him stick with the systems that were set up and in use before he left.
For example, we have an online support desk to manage his customer service. It works extremely well for our purposes and has been for over a year. Anyone who has questions about their orders or download links or needs support for one of our specific programs is directed to the support desk. It’s been a system that has been in place for over a year and has been working well. We even overcame the challenge of retraining clients to go to the support desk rather than emailing the business owner directly. We had him change his email address and not publish the new one so that we could avoid him getting caught up in support questions.
Well, he broke the system. One of the first things he did upon his return was publish his personal email address. And guess what happened? Yup - people started emailing him for support. As soon as I saw his email address published, I sat him down and told him to expect support emails. It’s human nature to want to deal with the guy whose name is on the door. I told him to reply to every email and redirect them to the support desk for help. Just a quick note thanking them for their question and asking them to resubmit it to the support desk for assistance as he has a team in place that could help them.
A few days after the email address was published, I started receiving emails in my inbox. Messages forwarded from him asking me to look into this problem or another. That’s where I put my foot down.
As an Online Business Manager, it’s my job to create systems to support online business owners and manage their daily operations. It’s also my job to make sure that they use the systems we have in place in the way they were supposed to be designed.
My client was breaking the system - going outside the standard procedures we had in place to support him. He had complained of being overwhelmed by support e-mails in the past and not being able to focus on creating new products and services. So we created a system that removed that stressor from his plate. He went against the system by publishing his email address. Anticipating that he would start to receive support questions, I outlined a procedure to follow should he receive Customer Service questions. He went against it again by not following the procedure I asked him to follow. We sat down again and I outlined how critical it is that he follow the systems we have in place and that he not let his customers stray from that system.
He’s vowed to not publish his email address anymore. Will he keep that promise? Only time will tell. What I do know is that I will work to ensure that even if he strays from the established systems, that his team does not.
My role as Online Business manager is to ensure the systems are followed. That’s the most important thing you can do for a client. Listen to their needs and challenges, design systems to support them, and make sure that they follow the systems.
The sales letter, in the free training, offered at the above referenced squeeze page got a 13.9% sales conversion for over 10,000 visitors
Could marketing online really be as easy as modeling what is proven to work?
PS: Twitter, tweets, facebook, digg, web 2.0, social media marketing…
How can you use all the new tools effectively in your online marketing and not waste your time on what doesn’t work?
On Tuesday October 28th, 500 people will get a Limited Edition package that Dr. Joe Vitale created that includes a 48-page printed guide and exclusive audio CD shipped to your door.
It shows you how to make sense of the new social media marketing tools - which ones work….and most importantly how to use them as part of an integrated marketing strategy. (IMPORTANT: Social Media Marketing is a waste of time if not used as part of this 4-step system)
You’ll want to be on this list to get first notice:
