Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the download text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

I meant to have this out to you on Wednesday last week after I recorded it, since the prior evening I attended a Third Tuesday meet-up in Toronto, which was the inspiration for the podcast. However, you see, I bought a new macbook pro.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my new mac, but this is my first mac and since I recorded the podcast on the mac there was a BIG learning curve to figure out how to get it ready for publication on this blog. As you will hear, it’s not quite right, but the message is definitely clear enough to enjoy. Apologies for the change in volume and odd shuffling noises.

How Do You Measure Social Media?

This Third Tuesday meet-up was a good one, the topic being - How do we measure social media? - with three expert panelists (Katie Paine, Marshall Sponder and Marcel Lebrun) taking questions from the audience made up of mostly PR and communications professionals, and related consultants and small business owners.

The idea of measuring the impact of social media is akin to measuring the effect of branding. Social media, much like branding, is often difficult to directly correlate with a business outcome, despite it obviously having a big impact on business results. I won’t go into here since I do so in some depth in the podcast, so have a listen!

If you are a blogger, a business owner or a person interested in the business side of social media, you will enjoy this rambling podcast.

Thanks to Joseph Thornley and his crew for putting on a great meet-up.

Show Notes

1. Introduction to the Third Tuesday event
2. What we mean when talking about measuring social media
3. What this means for bloggers
4. Why it’s the conversation that matters most, not the influencer
5. No industry wide standards for measuring social media are available
6. Not many people are actively measuring, only monitoring
7. There is an opportunity to provide a database of influential sites ranked by social media analysis
8. Use social media to assess how your competition is perceived and use that information to compete
9. Consulting firms providing social media data mining services
10. What changes to ad budget spending at companies means for bloggers
11. Why being an influencer in any niche is so important

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 30 Minutes - 10 MB]

[ Add Your Comment | 13 Comments ]

You can follow me on Twitter here - http://twitter.com/yarostarak

Did you notice the tipping point? Twitter hit the tip somewhere in the last few months and it’s clearly gaining serious critical mass.

I’ve had a Twitter account for many months but largely ignored it because social media is such an attention suck and I already spend too long in front of the computer as it is. I’ve successfully ignored Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and I thought I’d do the same with Twitter, but alas, sometimes you can’t let things pass or you may miss out on opportunities.

I like to focus on one thing and become really good at it - in this case blogging and running my business - but you don’t want to get left behind either, and since Twitter isn’t too labor intensive to manage (compared to Facebook or MySpace), I’ve decided to bend to the will of the people and get active tweeting.

Twitter looks like a lot of fun and since it’s really like blogging but without massive wordcounts, it should be easy enough to maintain.

How Many Signs Do You Need Before You Take Action?

There have been a few signs lately that prompted the decision to become an active Twitterererer, for example…

Read the rest of this entry >>

[ Add Your Comment | 33 Comments ]

Press play to begin streaming the audio or right click the text link and choose save as or save link.

Download the MP3 [ 19 Minutes - 5 MB]

Yesterday I was sitting at my computer facing a few too many emails and a rather large list of things to do and I could already feel my head start to hurt.

So what did I do? - I went to the park!

I decided if I was going to continue working I would probably be in considerable head pain by the end of the day, so I dropped everything and went to the Brisbane Botanic Gardens at Mt-Cootha and hung out with the birds.

I had my iRiver MP3 player with me and was listening to some podcasts, which created a desire to make one of my own impromptu rambling podcasts. My little iRiver has a built-in microphone, so I was itching to see how good it was - and wow, I’m impressed. The audio quality is not bad I’m sure you will agree, though I hope you like the sound of birds in the background :-).

The podcast is a short one about a whole range of Internet business topics starting with social marketing, moving on to email lists and then finishing with a little note on keeping perspective.

Show Notes

1. Yaro talks about the recent Rich Schefren Attention Doctrine and StomperSMARTS launches
2. A look at how the Internet marketing focus is shifting to social marketing
3. How Yaro is using email lists with his blog to make money
4. Why it is important to focus on intrinsic values and not just money

Click Here to Download the MP3 [ 19 Minutes - 5 MB]

[ Add Your Comment | 14 Comments ]

Update: The links in this post now point to the sale page for the SMARTS program, since the program went live. If you haven’t seen the video yet, here’s the link: Going Natural 2.0 Video.

Also I called Don Crowther “Dan” in this article and have since fixed it - sorry Don!

******

StomperNet have released a new video that provides a fantastic discussion of what Social Marketing is, why it’s so critical to the future of Internet marketing and ends with three (well four really) practical ways you can use social media sites to drive traffic to your site.

Here’s the link -

Social Marketing: Success without SEO, Pay-Per-Click or Affiliates

The video is long - 50 Minutes - and the tips start about half way through, but it’s worth watching from start to finish, especially if you have not looked into using social media and Web 2.0 sites as a means to market your blog or business.

Social Marketing Is Huge

I don’t know about you, but I can’t keep up with all the social media and Web 2.0 talk lately.

Not a day goes by where I don’t get some notification from Facebook and given the growth numbers the site is putting up, it won’t be long until Facebook rivals MySpace, the current traffic leader.

Then there’s YouTube, the video sharing site that apparently every single American who uses the Web goes to watch at least once every day.

…And that only skims the surface. There’s social networking sites like LinkedIn, bookmarking sites like Digg and Delicious and collaborative resource sites like Wikipedia. Plus every day a new Web 2.0 site is born offering yet another way to connect with people and drive traffic back to your site.

It’s so overwhelming, most of the time I just take a quick look at the few sites I frequent or keep profiles at, then go back and post an article to my blog.

However every now and then something comes out about social marketing that I take notice of because I don’t want to be left behind and I trust the source of the information.

The “problem” with social marketing is how different it is to traditional marketing. You can’t even smell like you are trying to sell something or just using the site to build links or traffic back to your site, because as soon as you do - BOOM - you are banned.

To make social marketing work you have to…well…be social. Yeah, not surprising, but very true.

Social marketing is about community participation, but you can have a business agenda. You are there first and foremost to be an active and valuable member of a community and if you are smart, use your profile and connections to drive traffic and links back to your site.

Everything has to be organic and friendly - it’s actually a wonderful way to market a business because it’s like talking to friends. There’s no hard sell because hard sell simply doesn’t work - it’s not even permitted.

How Do Top Marketers React

Read the rest of this entry >>

[ Add Your Comment | 27 Comments ]

Do you know MySpace? It’s an extremely popular social friendship site frequented by a lot of teens from around the world, in particular the USA. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp bought MySpace when it purchased it’s parent organisation for a whopping $580 million back in July 2005.

MySpace has a high value because of it’s massive userbase, which in turn provides a potentially rich source of advertising income (let’s just say its $580 mil purchase price included a lot of money for future potential). Given the audience is a young demographic it’s a very lucrative market for advertisers. Teens are notoriously hard to reach because they constantly change opinion and their tastes fluctuate frequently (do teenagers still watch TV?).

While most people reading this blog won’t ever consider buying adspace on MySpace the potential to use it to market your business should not be overlooked. I recently heard that bands have used MySpace as a marketing vehicle to increase their exposure. Thanks to the sheer volume of members and active users, if a music single (mp3) goes viral just within the MySpace…err…space, it can mean big things for the band. Why not apply this technique to your business?

Not every business is going to suit the MySpace demographics, but if yours does then take a few seconds to think about the potential if you can pull off a successful campaign. If you can “crack the cool” and get something popular within MySpace that also promotes your business, the publicity payoff could be monumental, and (in my opinion) enough to launch a start-up.

Blog marketing is popular because it’s cheap, has broad scope and is effective as an awareness builder without being obtrusive like “blast” advertising. Web communities like MySpace may provide similar marketing benefits if you can make it work for your business. There is no secret formula, and just like any viral marketing campaign it can be quite a hit and miss process and certainly not an exact science.

It could be as simple as creating a widget or a song, or a video or an image and attempt to “infect” the MySpace community with it. I’m sure if a consultant specialized in MySpace marketing and of course achieved results, their services would be in high demand (anyone out there?). A marketer who knows how to utilize any of the current social software services for generating publicity and can consistently bring in results has a very cutting edge business opportunity, one that I expect faces very little competition currently (maybe because it’s not possible to do it consistently).

If anyone has attempted to use MySpace.com to market their business I’d love to hear about it. Please leave a comment.

[ Add Your Comment | 40 Comments ]