Eww, Those Aren’t Raisins

There are very few certainties in life, today I found out my brother-in-law was fired from his job. Yesterday was his birthday, nice gift don’t you think? What does this have to do with anything, well lets just say you can be good at what you do and even work for a “good” company and can still have the rug pulled out from under you. Now starting your own business won’t mean that everything is going to be peaches and cream but it does allow you to control a few more of the variables.

Well That Was One Hell of a Birthday Gift

My brother-in-law was working for a “good” company, he was in charge of manufacturing at one of their plants. Roughly a year ago he was requited from within for a position as a field manager which meant a promotion with a healthy salary increase. He really liked working for this company, they had awesome benefits and seemed to have a very worker friendly culture. My brother-in-law relished the chance for the promotion and looked forward to retiring with this company, so he thought.

6 Months in Hell

The company sent him out-of-state for some management training and then on the road for some on-site training before sending him to a location to function as the site manager and get some on-the-job training and mentoring. Let’s just say that he was shafted, he was put in charge of a long neglected site, with a pissed off customer, a lead tech with no experience and a number of issues and an office manager also with no experience. He also received little to no mentoring as he was told he would and his boss threw him under the bus numerous times and never had his back. A position he liked working for a company he thought he would retire with turned into a living hell for about the last 6 months and then he was terminated.

Procrastination is Like Masturbation, It Feels Good Until You Realize You are Just Screwing Yourself

I am sure we have heard of or experienced similar stories ourselves and they all suck. What is the point of all this, you ask? My point is this, you never know what tomorrow will bring but if you have been sitting back waiting to start your own business, STOP! Don’t wait any longer there is no time like the present. This economy is in the muck but if you do not grab the reins and hop into that saddle you might find yourself out on your ass, like my brother-in-law. So start today, start planning, start applying for funding. Make a business plan, start making contacts. Start taking control of your life and quit following others as the might just lead you off a cliff.

Take a Chance On Yourself

A little over a year ago I was working for a company and hated my job, so I up and quit and started PipingShark, now I must be honest it hasn’t taken off as quickly as I had hoped and things have been a bit of a strain financially but I have a lot less stress and I am in control of my success and failure. It can be done, it will be challenging and also very rewarding. You may not succeed the first time, but many very famous and wealthy people have failed numerous times before they had success. The number one key to success is TENACITY, never give up. Keep fighting, never let someone else talk you down and away from your dreams. Anything is attainable with hard-work and perseverance.

You can find resources to help you all over the place, blogs, the local library, the Small Business Administration, your family and friends. Stop dreaming and start DOING!

So I have been checking out Google+ for the last few days and I must say that it is much better than Google’s last few attempts namely Wave and Buzz, hell they are nowhere near being in the same universe.

My quick thoughts on Google+, for a little more in depth analysis check out this post from the What’s Next Blog – Google+ mania: most pundits are missing the real point

There is such a small population of users (under 20 million and the majority male) currently on Google+, I have been able to engage and converse with a number of people that I didn’t know before or were hard to reach on other platforms do to the noise levels within those networks.

Not sure how long this will last but if you can get in early and try to engage with people you have been wanting to but not been able to, it could be a potential boost for your business and marketing efforts.  You can reach influencers in many niches and new audiences as well.

I have been reading articles and talking with people on Google+ about how it might be a Facebook or Twitter killer and the consensus seems to be that it will not kill Facebook but might affect Twitter to some degree, though there is plenty of room for various platforms in the social media landscape.

Many people myself included feel that Microsoft and Apple actually have the most to fear because Google is amassing a number of homegrown applications and hardware devices that work wonderfully efficiently with these apps.

Time will tell but it looks like Microsoft needs to come out with a game-changer and start innovating or they might be headed they way of the Dodo bird, T-rex, 8-track tapes and VHS.

If you are not on Google+ and would like to be I have a few invites I can send out just leave a comment on this post and I will email you an invitation.  What are your thoughts about Google+ and world domination?

You’ve heard the saying less is more, right? Organize your life and business with these four tips!

1. Don’t Follow Every Blog

• Find three to five blogs, who’ve useful advise and unsubscribe from the rest.
• Reduce the email you receive, focus more on your website and less on email.

2. Clean Up Your Website

• Remove all the clutter on your homepage, use less ads and you will sell more, too many ads confuse your readers and make it hard for them to make a choice.
• You want opt-ins,  place the opt-in form on top of the sidebar, what you want people to see first, place at the top of the sidebar.
• Eliminate products or ads that do not fit the niche you are in.

3. Keep Everything Organized

• Use password safe software to keep all your usernames and passwords in a safe centralized location.
• Develop a file system that’s quick and easy to use.

4. Keep It Separated

• Make sure your business and personal expenses are separated.
• Keep your receipts in one spot you can access quickly.
• Track your purchases throughout the year, when tax time comes you know your write-offs.

The social networking application Twitter, a free platform that allows users to send short 140 character messages to all the people following their account at the same time. It also allows you to follow other users and keep up on what they posted. Twitter has over one-hundred and sixty million users making it one of the most widely used social networking platforms today. With numerous third party applications to supplement Twitter’s native functionality, making the platform a very useful social networking tool.

Tweed Adder

Tweet Adder’s popular premium third party application allows you to automatically follow users based on keywords listed in their profiles or in the tweets;Twitter messages. Tweed Adder also allows you to automatically follow users based on location, language spoken and how recently someone has used Twitter. Tweet Adder offers four plans for 2011, one profile for $55, five profiles for $74, ten profiles for $110 and unlimited profiles for $188. A profile is a license for each individual twitter account you manage.

Twiends

Twiends offers a free service that works by giving credits called “seeds” to users in exchange for following other Twiends’ users. The seeds a user collects by following other users are then offered as an enticement for users to follow them, you can set the number of seeds you offer per follow.
You can offer from between two to ten seeds per follow.

Tweepi

Tweepi offers a free service that allows you to semi-automatically follow other users up to twenty people by checking their profiles and clicking follow all. Tweepi also allows you to quickly follow back users who followed your profile and remove or “flush” users who refuse to follow you, if you so choose. This allows a user to more quickly and efficiently manage his Twitter account and add followers and remove non-followers.

Manual Following

A quick but rather tedious way to add followers fast is to manually follow another users’ follower list and a number of those people will follow you back. You can continue to do this with different user lists and build your follow list up to two-thousand followers quickly after that Twitter caps you daily ability to follow new users at one hundred and ten percent of your current total. So if you have two-thousand followers you can only follow up to twenty-two hundred people.

Social networking sites are online communities, they make it easier for users to meet and communicate with each other.
Blogs allow you to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular subject. What good is your blog if no one reads it. If you are using your blog for business purposes or to make money, then you will defiantly want to promote it.

When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing read content on your website. That content is then used to rank your site for certain keywords. So if you run a blog on dog groomers in Oregon, there’s a decent chance that your blog appears in searches for Oregon dog groomers. Getting your blog to rank high in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) takes time and effort and can be expensive to do. That’s where social networking can help.

Social networking sites allow users who have the same goals and common interests to connect. There’s a good chance that your online friends would enjoy your blog, but first they have to know it exists. Social networking sites, typically allow you to put a link to your blog on your profile. This allows other community members to checkout your blog. You can also private message friends and invite them to check out your blog, or post promotional messages on the sites. Once you join a social networking website and start networking with with your friends new and old you can naturally start easing into using the social network for promoting your blog. Always make sure to have alink to your blog on your profile and use private messages and promotional posts to help spread the word about your blog. Just don’t over do it, to the point of spamming people or they might unfriend, block or quit following you all together and that would be counter productive to your goals.

Although there’s a good chance you’re already a member of a social networking site, you may not be. If you’re not already a member, but would like to become one, you will need to find social networking sites to join. You can easily search Google and find a number of popular sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Before becoming a member, you may want to first check the site out, to make sure it is what you are looking for.

Full Disclosure

Besides PipingShark.com promoting the ProBlogger’s “31 Days to a Build a Better Blog” ebook. I have no personal or working affiliations with any of these bloggers or their blogs.  I have just found the information they provide to be useful and they do not tend to be over zealous on sending emails or sales pitches, which I personally find to get a bit annoying.  Check them out and hopefully you will find them useful as well.

ProBlogger – Darren Rowse is the premier blogger in the pro-blogging make money online niche and also has a couple other successful blogs.

David Risley – David Risley has some good content and delivers it with what I feel is a refreshing no BS style.

ChirsG -Chris Garrett has partnered with Darren Rowse on a number of projects and offers great information on building authority with your blog.

Traffic Generation Cafe – Ana Hoffman has a great blog on traffic building, SEO, social media and the like. Well written and informative.

Lewis Howes – Lewis Howes is the man when it comes to LinkedIn check his blog out if you want to optimize your LinkedIn profile. He also knows a thing or two about a few other subjects.

Hello everybody and welcome to PipingShark. I am excited to join the Ultimate Blog Party hosted by 5 Minutes for Mom. It is a great opportunity to visit other blogs you had no clue even existed.

My name is Joe I enjoy working with small businesses and helping them improve their social media reach and influence and increase the amount of traffic to their blogs by utilizing SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

If this is your first visit, check it out, if you’ve been here before, thanks for coming back. But anyway, enjoy the party and have fun.

Please feel free to comment!

Check out the hundreds of cool blog and bloggers and even enter to win some prizes.

Here are 10 WordPress plugins you can use in conjunction with your Facebook fan page or to add Facebook like features to your WordPress site.  All plugins are compatible with WordPress 3.0.5 or higher.

1. Facebook Registration Tool Provides a registration mechanism that is both Facebook user and non-user friendly.

2. Facebook Members Enables Facebook Page owners to attract and gain “Likes” from their website.

3. Facebook Comments for WordPress Allow visitors to comment on posts using their Facebook profiles.

4. Simple Facebook Connect Add any sort of Facebook Connect functionality to a WordPress blog.

5. Facebook CommentsTNG Pulls comments from imported Facebook Notes into your blog.

6. Embed Facebook Paste the URL of a Facebook page, group, event, album, photo, or note in a WordPress post/page and this plugin will embed it automatically.

7. Facebook Like for Tags Share new posts with users who “Liked” your tags or categories.

8. WordPress Facebook Like Plugin Adds a Facebook “Like” button to your posts.

9. WordPress Facebook Grabber Insert content from Facebook into your WordPress post or page.

10. Add Link to Facebook Add links to your Facebook wall, pages or groups automatically.

So, you are thinking about starting a a blog or maybe you already have and things aren’t going quite like you thought they would?

Blogging can sound like the perfect career, you work for yourself, you set your hours, you decide which direction to go in. You start day dreaming about all the money you will be making and all the free time you will have. There are a number of people that make money with their blogs and the businesses they have built around them. Most successful bloggers have run into some of these issues, if not all of them at one time or another.

Below are five key issues that you should be prepared for when it comes to running a blog.

1. Monetization Issues

There are plenty of people making money online with blogs. Most of them have been at it for years now and have figured out what it takes for them to monetize a blog. Most successful bloggers say that they learned almost everything about monetization via trial and error. What works for them won’t necessarily work for you, each blog is different and appeals to different crowds. You will need to experiment and find out what works best for your blog.

2. Traffic

Every blog hits a traffic plateau from time to time. When your blog hits a plateau you have to switch things up to take your traffic to the next level. Try running a contest or giveaway, host a blog carnival, cross promote posts or trade links with another blog. Get creative and push your traffic to a new peak.

3. Rejection

Guest posts are a great way to attract more viewers to your site. For a new blogger it can be very difficult to get a guest post published on a larger site. Don’t take the rejection personally, just move on to the next blog. Try small and medium sized blogs, this will build up your portfolio. Eventually, guest posting will begin to snow ball into bigger things and bigger blogs.

4. Criticism

Not everyone is going to like everything you do. Readers will leave comments disagreeing or criticizing your posts. There is a saying, “That there is no such thing as bad publicity.” If they are criticizing your blog, that means they are reading your content which means they are creating traffic. Plus a bit of criticism may increase a posts popularity and you might even get other readers coming to your defense.

5. Self Doubt

There may come a time, when you ask yourself, what am I doing? Maybe your traffic is stagnant or you aren’t making as much money as you had hoped you would be. This is where the rubber hits the road. The key to push past this hurdle is to keep knocking out content regardless of your doubt. If you give up, you will never know what could have happened.

Final Thoughts
I have run into these issues and in some ways continue to deal with them from time to time. Remember, these are just speed bumps and these issues can only defeat you if you allow it. So keep your chin up and keep working and improving!

Below are five rules for using social media.  If you follow these simple rules you will end up getting more out of using social media then you would not heeding these rules.

1. Listen First and Foremost

Social media is not about you. It’s about people’s relationships with you. Listen before you speak.

2. Get Involved

Social media is about conversations and building relationships. It takes effort. Don’t just talk about yourself. Ask questions, engage people and link. Most of all, be inspiring.

3. Give Up Control

You can’t control the conversation. If you want people to spread your message, you have to trust them. Listen, inspire, engage, let go.

4. Be Honest

You can’t spin the truth with Social Media. Be open, honest and authentic in everything you say and do.

5. Think Long Term

Don’t expect immediate results that are easily measurable. Building trust and making connections takes time.