Using WordPress to Power Your Business

admin, 01 November 2010, 171 comments
Categories: Internet Marketing Tools, Misc Internet Marketing Stuff!
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Went to WordCampPhilly over the weekend.  Here are some of the main takeaways:

Well worth the $10 it costs me to attend this un-conference for the day!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
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Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship in Philadelphia, PA

admin, 13 September 2010, 69 comments
Categories: Misc Internet Marketing Stuff!
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The Nuts and Bolts of the Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship

As the Director of Marketing and Communication for Applied Systems Technology, Inc. (AST, http://www.astusa.com), a software development and management consulting firm exclusively serving the staffing industry, I’m looking for an intern to help out in the following areas:

Requirements for the Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship

We are looking for applicants with the following skills, experience, and disposition:

Other Details About the Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship

If Interested…

Email your resume to Everett Reiss at ev@astusa.com, and in the body of the email explain why this internship in social media and internet marketing interests you and why you would be a good candidate for it.

Internet Marketing Lessons 9 and 10 from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

admin, 12 August 2010, 106 comments
Categories: Content Development for Small Business
Tags: , ,

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the fifth and final post of Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. When Thomas Paine published Common Sense back in 1776 the Internet was about 200 years off and blogging had 225 years to lay low before entering our lexicon. However, bloggers, content marketers, small businesses owners, and Thomas Paine all share the goal of communicating a message through the most effective channels out there and persuading people to take a specific action.

Thomas Paine shares his Internet Marketing wisdom with us

Thomas Paine

Check out the first post in this series for more on why it makes perfect sense to look to Common Sense for Internet marketing lessons. Before getting to our final two lessons, here are the first 8 lessons we’ve mined from Common Sense thus far:

  1. Figure out the specific content that you can contribute to your niche.
  2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
  3. Have one main point.
  4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.
  5. Break up your content into digestible chuncks to aid understanding.
  6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!
  7. Let your passion bleed through your language.
  8. Don’t just point out problems, offer solutions!

Lesson 9. Offer Realistic Optimism that People Can Trust

Whether you’re trying to get people to do something good for themselves, buy your product, vote, or fill out a contact form; you want your content to be positive, optimistic, and energetic. You can be negative, but that’s only good if you want people to act against something. Speaking or writing negatively about a competitor, if effective, may make your audience consider other options, but positivity is the best policy when trying to attact people or at least get them to be for something.

However, you have to offer positivity and optimism people can trust. “Too good to be true” optimism doesn’t fly for long. Therefore, strive for a similar brand of realistic optimism that Thomas Paine pushed in his Common Sense pamphlet.

As Paine drew his Pamphlet to conclusion, he confidently wrote “that nothing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independence” (53). He wrote this long before independence was declared. Even today, 235 years on the other side of Common Sense, we can feel Paine’s certainty and optimism, and get fired up about independence, freedom, and all that good stuff.

But there was more to Paine’s optimism than just confidence. He modified it with realism by acknowledging that achieving independence is going to be a tough road – unpleasant but necessary business:

“These proceedings may at first appear strange and difficult; but, like all other steps which we have already passed over, will in a little time become familiar and agreeable; and, until an independance is declared, the Continent will feel itself like a man who continues putting off some unpleasant business from day to day, yet knows it must be done, hates to set about it, wishes it over, and is continually haunted with the thoughts of its necessity” (54).

In lesson 8 we talked about offering helpful content that solves peoples problems. In addition, in order to be truly helpful, such content also needs to honestly prepare the audience for the challenges and difficulties that they may encounter on the way to the solution.

Lesson 10. Continuously Update Your Content

On the day the first edition of Common Sense was published, a speech the king had made had been published in America, so Paine quickly added an appendix to his pamphlet that addressed the contents of the kings speech. Also, in a subsequent edition to the pamphlet, Paine added some specific calculations to show the cost along with how feasible it would be for America to have a sizeable navy.
Like Paine we should maintain an attitude of continuous improvement towards our content for the following reasons:

So that’s it! A big thanks to Thomas Paine for giving us 10 timeless lessons we can apply to the rapidly moving Internet and social media marketing arena. Click here if you haven’t read or would like to review all 10 of these Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business.
Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

NJSA Teams Up with Everett Reiss to Help Two Staffing Firms in Social Media

admin, 12 July 2010, 182 comments
Categories: Social Media for the Staffing Industry
Tags: , ,

On Tuesday, June 22, 2010, I wrapped up the third seminar in a three part series on social media and the staffing industry.  The New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) organized the event and teamed up with Applied Systems Technology, Inc. (AST), the staffing software firm that I work for, to have me speak about profitable ways to use social media in the staffing industry.  While preparing for the event, Jack Wellman, who’s on the Board of Directors of NJSA and President and COO of Joule, Inc. gave me a call and suggested that we do something a bit more compelling than the usual Power Point presentation.  After brainstorming for a few minutes, we decided that we’d offer up my services to the first three NJSA-member staffing companies who expressed interest in working with me for two weeks on developing a presence on either Facebook, Linkedin, or Twitter.

I ended up working with two staffing professionals from two New Jersey staffing firms:

Roseanne made excellent progress on Bryant Staffing’s Facebook Page, and Josephine did a great job building out her personal Linkedin and Twitter profiles, and also creating a Linkedin company profile and Twitter page for High Power Temps.

Here are some highlights from the seminar.

Here are some of the takeaways from my time working with Roseanne and Josephine:

Email me if you’re interested in having me speak to your business or association on profitable ways you can start engaging in social media today.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
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Recent Videos on Building a Facebook Page and Using Linkedin for Small Business

admin, 15 June 2010, 56 comments
Categories: Social Media for the Staffing Industry
Tags: , ,

Here are some recent videos I posted on my company’s Mad Staffing Blog.  One video is on how easy it is to build a Facebook Page and the other video are three things you have to do Today! on Linkedin (if you haven’t already).

I’m making these videos in preparation for a speaking engagement I have on Building Profitable Web 2.0 Activities into Your Daily Work Lives with the New Jersey Staffing Association at the Edison Sheraton Hotel on June 22, 2010 from 8a-10a.  Click the link to register.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
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Freedom to Blog Comes at a Price!

admin, 31 May 2010, 110 comments
Categories: Blogging about Blogging
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“Freedom is never free, it comes at a price!” 

These are not new words, but old ones that are good to return to with each new Memorial Day.  Philadelphia’s District Attorney, R. Seth Williams, who serves in the Army Reserves, spoke these words today at the 2010 Memorial Day services at the Korean War Memorial at Penn’s Landing.  When we pause to take in a Memorial Day ceremony, read the names and words engraved on war memorial stones; or even watch an HBO mini-series like Band of Brothers, or The Pacific, we can feel the weight of the cost of freedom in our guts:
And those are just the direct human costs.
 
But from the Revolutionary War to our present day conflicts abroad in Iraq and Afghanistan, the blood of almost a million-and-a-half of our young men and women have truly purchased life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for those of us in America and beyond.  While some of these wars were true “no brainers,” even the dabatable armed conflicts have produced the fruit of freedom:

It’s also important to remember that freedom does not necessarily spell out an easier life, but it does provide hope – hope to build a better life, actually have some say in your destiny, and to dream and even pursue those dreams.

It’s easy to take these freedoms for granted – even a trivial one like blogging!  But think about it – in N. Korea, Sudan, and Burma, you’re either not blogging due to lack of Internet access and inspiration, and if you are – you better be extremely careful what you write!  Of course restricted “blogging rights” is somewhere around second-to-last on the list of these oppressed people’s problems.

Here are some Slideshares of images I took today of the Korean War Memorial and ceremonies at Penn’s Landing, and look at how close freedom came to being completely squeezed out of the Korean Peninsula.  Click the view on slide share icon on the bottom-right, and then the Full icon at the bottom-right of the SlideShare for fullscreen.

 

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
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Internet Marketing Lessons 7 and 8 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

admin, 28 May 2010, 199 comments
Categories: Content Development for Small Business
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Here are two more Internet marketing gems from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense, that he published in 1776 to inspire the colonial masses to get behind the case for American independence.  Check out why it makes perfect sense to look to Common Sense  for Internet marketing lessons.  Also, here are the first 6 lessons we’ve covered thus far:

  1. Figure out the specific content that you can contribute to your niche.
  2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
  3. Have one main point.
  4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.
  5. Break up your content into digestible chuncks to aid understanding.
  6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!
Placard of where Thomas Paine's Common Sense was printed.

This sign sums it up best - just a few blocks from my home!

Lets get to the next two lessons!

7. Let Your Passion Bleed Through Your Language

Think about textbooks – those hard and heavy books that we all had to cover by the next day or face threatening consequences.  Our textbooks contained important information we needed to know to succeed in the future or at least get to the next grade.  But as relevant as the material was to our immediate success, it sure as hell was painful to get through, causing many of us to find alternative ways to pretend we actually cracked ‘em open.

What were these old school textbooks lacking?  Mostly, passion and personality.  Imagine if instead of dryly telling us the facts about Thomas Paine, Common Sense, and the American Revolution, our history teachers jumped up on their desks and passionately read Thomas Paine on why America’s only king is God and Law:

“But where says some is the King of America? I’ll tell you Friend, he reigns above, and doth  not make havoc of mankind the Royal Brute of Britain. Yet that we may not appear to be defective even in earthly honors, let a day be solemnly set apart for proclaiming the charter; let it be brought forth placed on the divine law, the word of God; let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve as monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is” (43).

I think this method would have seared the significance of Paine and his pamphlet into our memories and we may have even felt compelled to read the pamphlet for ourselves.

Here are some ways to get passionate about whatever you’re writing:

8. Don’t Just Point Out Problems, Offer Solutions!

It’s easy to criticize and be negative, but over the longterm negativity doesn’t sell because it doesn’t deliver solutions.  Most quality and valuable Internet marketing content (really any content throughout history) not only points out a problem, but offers creative and practical solutions.  As Jim Kukral, a small business web consultant, likes to say – offer people helpful information that solves their problems!

Thomas Paine got this.  While Common Sense contains, much vitriolic language towards the British crown, he also served up some enlightened ideas about what an independent government in America could look like.

“Let the assemblies be annual, with a President only. The representation more equal. Their business wholly domestic, and subject to the authority of a Continental Congress. Let each colony be divided into six, eight, or ten, convenient districts, each district to send a proper number of delegates to Congress, so that each colony send at least thirty. The whole number in Congress will be least 390. Each Congress to sit and to choose a president by the following method. When the delegates are met, let a colony be taken from the whole thirteen colonies by lot, after which, let the whole Congress choose (by ballot) a president from out of the delegates of THAT province. In the next Congress, let a colony be taken by lot from twelve only, omitting that colony from which the president was taken in the former Congress, and so proceeding on till the whole thirteen shall have had their proper rotation.  And in order that nothing may pass into a law but what is satisfactorily just, not less than three fifths of the Congress to be called a majority. He that will promote discord, under a government so equally formed as this, would have joined Lucifer in his revolt” (40).

 While Paine’s solution for government in his pamphlet was not very detailed or even original for that matter; he did an excellent job of whittling down some enlightened ideas into one paragraph and sharing them with the public.

Here are some ways you can offer up content that solves peoples problems:

Here are ways I’ve been doing this in the industry I offer my services to:

Come back next week for our final two Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine. 

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

Internet Marketing Lessons 5 and 6 From Thomas Paine to Your Small Business

admin, 19 May 2010, 111 comments
Categories: Content Development for Small Business
Tags: , , ,

Break Up Your Content and Don’t Be an Idiot!

Internet marketing lessons from who?  Why not Al Gore?  Perhaps these questions crossed your mind, or perhaps your mind works like mine, so that mining Internet marketing lessons from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense makes common sense to you!  In short, Thomas Paine was an incredibly effective content marketer arguing for the necessity to declare independence from the British crown. 

For more on Thomas Paine and why I mined Internet marketing lessons from his life and writings, checkout the first entry of this series on Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business. 

So far we’ve covered the following 4 of 10 Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business: 

  1. Figure out the specific content that you can passionately contribute to your niche.
  2. Define your personal brand and use your content to build on it.
  3. Have one main point.
  4. Make your content rich with target keywords and phrases.

Here are Internet Marketing Lessons 5 and 6: 

5. Break Up Your Content into Digestible Chunks to Aid Understanding

In writing Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s main goals was to explain in plain language to the masses why independence from Britain made sense.  To do this, Paine condensed these thoughts into a 47 page pamphlet, drew upon anti-monarchial thoughts from a book most commoners were familiar with – the Bible, and divided up his pamphlet into four sections: 

  1. OF THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN OF GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL, WITH CONCISE REMARKS ON THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION.
  2. OF MONARCHY AND HEREDITARY SUCCESSION
  3. THOUGHTS ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICAN AFFAIRS
  4.  OF THE PRESENT ABILITY OF AMERICA, WITH SOME MISCELLANEOUS REFLEXIONS (11).

Just like a big hunk of meat, carving up your content into digestible chunks aids helps your audience understand – in other words, it’s good communication!  Imagine if instead of breaking this series of Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine to Your Small Business into ten lessons, I simply had one really long post with no paragraph breaks.  You’d probably think “forget this” and move onto another site rendering my efforts a waste. 

Always look for ways to break up your content, and use numbered and bulleted lists whenever possible to increase readability and the chance your content will be consumed. 

6. Supporting your positions in a strong, entertaining, and witty manner is a plus!

Bold statements, a sprinkle of controversy, and a whitty unexpected left turn your sentences and paragraphs can go along way and make your readers want to keep coming back for more.  Thomas Paine understood this when he served up this scathing recap of England’s monarchial history: 

“England, since the conquest, hath known some few good monarchs, but groaned beneath a much larger number of bad ones; yet no man in his senses can say that their claim under William the Conqueror is a very honorable one. A French bastard landing with an armed banditti, and establishing himself king of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original. It certainly hath no like divinity in it” (24). 

Season your content with sarcasm, strong opinions, and compelling language that generates emotion while driving home your main point.  The readers who agree with you will get fired up and keep coming back for more.  Those who you piss off may still keep coming back because some of us just like to get angry.  If you ignore this and continue to serve up impotent content, well then you’re an idiot! 

Idiot or not, come back next week for two more Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine.  And until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

The quotations and page references came from Project Gutenberg’s Common Sense by Thomas Paine ebook; I encourage you to read it yourself!

Everett to Speak to Small Business Owners & Professionals in NYC on May 18th

admin, 10 May 2010, 54 comments
Categories: PR for Small Business, Social Media for the Staffing Industry
Tags: , , , ,

Everett shares one of the ten social media habits he’s going to talk about in his presentation on “Building Profitable Web 2.0 Activities into Your Daily Work Lives” at the New York Staffing Association’s Super Seminar day on May 18th at The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY.

In this video Everett talks about how to use HelpAReport.com‘s (HARO) daily emails to either find free PR for your own staffing firm and personal brand, or to share these requests for expertise with your candidates, clients, and prospects.

As you can see, sharing HARO expertise requests with clients, candidates, and prospects is a great way to stay in touch with important relationships in your network and stay top of mind.  Check out Everett’s recent post There’s Such a Thing as Free PR! for more info on how to fully leverage HARO as a social media tool in the staffing industry.

Get more information and register to join Everett and many other expert speakers and professionals in the staffing industry at NYSA’s Super Seminar Day on May 18, 2010 by visiting http://www.nystaffing.org/Super_Seminar_Day.html. Feel free to email Everett at ev@astusa.com or Jennifer Kelley at jennifer@nystaffing.org if you have any further questions.

Hope to see you there!

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
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There’s Such a Thing As Free PR!

admin, 03 May 2010, 134 comments
Categories: PR for Small Business
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
There is such a thing as free PR on helpareporterout.com

There's such a thing as free PR on HelpAReporterOut.com

Like my previous posts, I’m not going to tell you anything new!  Instead, I’m just going to rip off of Christopher S. Penn a social media tactic that has just paid off for me (I don’t think he’ll mind):

Signing up for, sharing, and responding to HelpAReporterOut.com (HARO) emails. 

Peter Shankman has re-defined PR by providing a free way for reporters to connect with potential sources of information.  Here’s how it works:

Recently I responded to a request from Linsey Knerl, Senior Writer for Wisebread.com, for marketing lessons learned from a mentor.  So I responded, and got prominently featured in her article 20 Important Lessons I Learned from My Marketing Mentor – check it out!  What a great way to promote my personal brand and my company, along with Jim Kukral, the marketing mentor I mentioned.

However, many times you’ll find that the HARO requests for expertise don’t apply to you.  This is where Chris Penn in one of his University of San Francisco’s online Internet Marketing lectures, suggests something so simple it’s brilliant:

If you see a request that matches the expertise of someone in your network, email it off to them. 

I’ve started doing this with some of my clients and business partners.  It gives me a reason to stay in touch with them besides, “Uhhh… just wanted to see how you were doing,” and can help them promote their business if they act on it.

Until next time, get out there, be empowered, and try something old in a new way!

And don’t worry, the 10 Internet Marketing Lessons from Thomas Paine  series will resume next week.

Everett Reiss
Internet Marketer for Small Business
Connect with me on:

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