Social Media Paint-by-Numbers

A recent research article by HubSpot helped me see why I like certain social media platforms and dislike others. It also contains lessons on how to make better use of both those we like and those we don’t.

As we’ve written before, there’s no magic bullet, no perfect time to post or special place to find all your business in one fell swoop. There is, however, meaningful data on how to use each platform to get the most out of it.

In the coming weeks I’ll be writing about how people (mostly unconsciously) perceive the major social media platforms, and what that translates to for your own use (and, of course, how it affects the services we provide for our clientele.)

Watch for it each Wednesday for the rest of the winter.

The Series

Twitter
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube
LinkedIn
Conclusions

I Can’t Spend All My Time Marketing!

And you don’t have to. You shouldn’t. Marketing, rather than being a flood of information about you and yours, should be a steady drip, drip, drip, like watering a delicate plant, not hosing down an elephant.

I’ve spent my adult life working with automation and efficiency using computers so any time there’s a task with repeatable steps, I look for a way to make those repeating parts automatic. It allows me to spend my time on the unique bits, the parts I can do better than a computer because they require creativity or special knowledge.

Automating and scheduling your online marketing is smart. Create messages (that’s the ‘unique to you’ bit) and schedule them in a single monthly session. (We use and recommend Hootsuite but there are a number of social media automation tools available.)

You still have to check in daily to interact with the real human beings who touch your social media messages, but you don’t have to be online 24/7 to keep your message (remember those 80/20 principles, both of them) in front of potential readers and fans.

Custom Author Website for $300

We’re considering adding custom author websites to our offerings.

These would be extremely affordable but worth about ten times what they’ll cost. I have nearly 25 years of experience in web development so I work quickly and efficiently and I love doing this.

For $300 (three hundred dollars) one time cost you’ll get a custom made WordPress site with a blog and as many pages as you need. It will include all the content you provide, text and images, and will be designed to match your book (or whatever color scheme you provide.) Once the site is created you’ll get one round of edits, which includes virtually any changes you like to layout, colors, fonts, text.

There must be a catch, right?

Not really.

What’s not included is the domain name and hosting, which you’ll have to buy from our preferred hosting company Charlottezweb. Domains are $10 per year and hosting is $52 per year. We also provide managed hosting; we charge $25 per year for domains and $125 per year for hosting. Managed hosting means we keep your site backed up, updated, and generally trouble free. It does not include updates, which you can do yourself easily. If you already have a domain name we can use that.

To summarize: a unique, custom WordPress site and blog for $300 plus hosting costs.

I want to do this for one author to work out the kinks before I make this a general offering. Whoever says yes first gets it.

Some of My Work

I’ve done loads of websites over the past 20 years. I haven’t been promoting my web business so my most recent work has primarily been for our own businesses, but there are a few for clients here as well.

This site, of course.

My author site.

My author coaching website Someday Box.

My music site, tunehenge.

A site for our client, author Errol Barr.

Custom Massage Work, my massage therapist.

Why You Should Avoid Digital Sharecropping

In the bad old days, some folks were trapped in a poverty-inducing cycle, farming land they could never own. Rich landowners allowed (“allowed” !) tenant farmers to work the land in exchange for a share of the crop. The rich landowner, simply because he owned the land, received a share of the crops as well.

The sharecropper could never make enough to buy the land. The system was designed to keep the rich rich and the poor poor.

Eleven times a week I hear questions about “the best blogging platform.” And I read recommendations of, not only various free blogging tools, but even folks who consider their Facebook page or other social media presence to be their online marketing.

If you don’t own the land, you’re sharecropping, building someone else’s empire.

… more … “Why You Should Avoid Digital Sharecropping”

Top 12 [make that 14] Tech Tools for Setting Up Your New Business

Tech Tools for Setting Up Your New BusinessThere are many online tech tools available for setting up a new business. As a small business owner myself for the past 10 years, I’ve come to rely on several that I recommend. (Down at the bottom is one Joel has been using a while.) The top 12 I recommend are:
… more … “Top 12 [make that 14] Tech Tools for Setting Up Your New Business”