Is That a Roll of Quarters in My Pocket?

Change. Some people love it, some people hate it. I’ve got a bunch of sliding around in my truck and I’m annoyed by it. I used to use it for vending machines at work, but the place I’m at now is a company that makes micro-markets. They’re pretty cool, you should check them out if you don’t know what they are.

You guessed it though, this post has nothing to do with vending machines. Or pocket change. Or anything resembling a roll of quarters in my pocket. It has to do with necessary changes to move ahead in life and do the things that need doing. In my case, the change involved switching my mailing list for my newsletter. I went from a simple text based email I wrote up every month and sent out via a group of people that had told me they wanted to get emails from me to a fancy mailing list program called Mailchimp.

I’m not getting any kickbacks from any of the links to these companies, mind you – I’m just trying to help anyone interested in learning more. With Mailchimp I have to say I was impressed. The setup was easy, as was importing my existing base of people that had signed up for my newsletter. I’m finding that it offers analytics that are pretty cool too – it helps me learn if I’m wasting my time or not. The answer is not, so that means I push ahead.

You’re possibly thinking that I’m an IT guy and a programmer at that. Of course setting up something is easy. Well let me tell you that I may be able to whip up some pretty cool stuff from time to time, but having to design something for this was not on the plate. I wanted quick and easy. And I got it at a price that was more than reasonable (my level of usage is free – how much more reasonable can you get?). So when I say it was easy I mean it.

So newsletter #1 went out and 40% of the addresses opened it. 3.8% clicked on something in the newsletter. Seem dismal? Well the industry average is 15.6% opening the mail and 1.8% clicking on something contained therein. That’s a win to me, but I’m one of those patient grind it out and achieve success through hard work kinds of people. If you prefer instant success then you probably don’t need to read my books or anybody else’s – you’re living in a fantasy land already!

So there’s nothing exciting about this blog, it’s just a bit of a public service announcement to fellow writers about something I found that seems pretty slick, easy, and affordable. What do I get out of it? Not a darn thing – unless you’re interested in being put on the newsletter mailing list and want to click here to sign up for it.

 

To learn more about Jason Halstead visit his website to read about him, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.

 

Too Much of a Good Thing

The day before my Twitter debacle a couple of weeks ago (I was banned for 12 days due to a misunderstanding, but I’m back now), I joined a new Triberr tribe called Power Sharers. For those of you scratching you chins wondering what the heck Triberr is, it’s a new website that allows bloggers to come together with like minded bloggers and use social media to amplify their presence. Huh? Okay, let me try again.

Let’s say I write a blog post (like this one!). It’s then loaded into the tribes I’m a member of on Triberr. A tribe is nothing more than a group of people that are (hopefully) like minded and willing to share each others posts. So I’ve written this blog article and it’s loaded into the available queues for everyone on Triberr that is a tribemate of mine. Each of them then has the opportunity to decide which social media networks they’re members of that they want to share the blog on (if any). In my experience the most used social media stream is Twitter.

There’s more than just sharing others blog posts though, it also provides a handy and useful tool for me to find other blogs worth reading. It shows me the title, author, and a snippet of the blog article. If I like it, I can read the entire thing. So in this way I’m not (personally) just blindly sharing content, I’m making sure it’s interesting first. Interesting to me, at least.

Now back to my Triberr experience. I was in a few groups that were focused on writing and writers, primarily. Then I got the invite to join Power Sharers. It seemed look a good opportunity to expand my reach so I jumped on it. Now I’m wondering if I jumped in over my head! Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot of potential with this group, but there are also several serious bloggers in here. Serious as in multiple posts a day. That means when I log into Triberr to check out my stream of available posts to share, It’s not an easy task anymore! What used to be 5 – 10 minutes is now 20 – 30, and that’s if I do it twice a day!

Furthermore I feel kind of bad. The vast majority of posts I do not share. It’s not that they don’t have value, in most cases, it’s that they aren’t things that would be of benefit to me or to the presence I’ve established via my social presence. I don’t write or tweet about how to make money blogging, for example, nor do I focus on sharing how to properly engage and motivate employees. Good topics worthy of reading up on, but they’re not my niche. My followers share similar interests with me, and while there may be a few that like to see those blogs, the majority do not. I’m more concerned about spamming out unwanted information and losing people (or getting banned again, though I have no reason to believe I would be). And so I carefully wade through the list of would-be blog posts and trim each daily list of a hundred or so down to three to five.

Ultimately I’m here to help my followers by giving them something I think is valuable and to help myself by reading these blogs and expanding my own reach. I’m happy to do some quid pro quo where it’s appropriate with another blogger, but I also understand if what I blog about has nothing to do with their social presence. Bummer for me, perhaps, but it’s a two way street and I’m okay with it. Exposing myself (legally and in a non-age restricted fashion) is not as important as keeping the faith of the people I’ve already got. My readers and followers come first, but having said that if I’m making any presumptions on their benefit I can just as easily stop – all I need is a friendly bit of feedback.

To learn more about Jason Halstead, visit his website to learn about him, his books, sign up for his newsletter, or check out some free samples of his books at http://www.booksbyjason.com.