• WordPress is a viable content management system (CMS) for professionals and businesses to share information and collaborate on.
• BuddyPress is a powerful plug-in to WordPress, in which you can create and manage your own social network.  Participants can connect with each other, start their own blogs within the network, update their statuses, ask and answer questions.
• Check out ilivewithadisability.com to see a powerful example of WordPress and BuddyPress at work to create website, get a message out, and a community for like-minded people.  @ronbercume is the main developer behind this project.
• Need an intranet for your business, use WordPress – Doug Stewart did a great presentation on “Making WordPress work at WORK.”
• Some other important WordPress plug-ins to checkout:
  • RoloPress – a simple CRM system.
  • EditFlow – helps manage your content writing, editing, and publishing process.  Awesome tool that Andrew Spittle presented that includes an editorial calendar, custom statuses for posts, and much more.
  • Capability Manager - creates roles and defines what they can do.
  • Multisite – manage multiple distinct sites out a single WordPress instance.
  • WordPress E-Commerce - engine behind e-commerce WordPress sites.  Justin Sainton of zaowebdesign.com presented this tool, which he’s been putting countless hours of work into.  Checkout http://getshopped.org for more info on this.
• $1208 – that’s what Yasmine Mustafa, CEO and Founder of 123linkit.com, spent on her WordPress website, including:
  • Domain and hosting through Bluehost.
  • Balsamiq to layout her website in wireframe pages.
  • Having someone design the template for her website through 99designs.com.

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

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

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
• Mad Staffing Blog

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:

• Keyword research and the search engine optimization (SEO) of AST’s content for website and the company’s Mad Staffing Blog (http://astusa.com/staffing-blog).
• Formatting and distributing content via blog, email campaigns, and PRWeb.com.  Could include editing of video content.
• Maintaining and segmenting email database.
• Monitoring and participating in industry conversations on social networks.
• Researching social media and Internet marketing tools that could have value for AST.
• Help AST staff members develop their own personal brand and presence on social networks, and keep AST’s Facebook Fan Page and Twitter profile up-to-date.

Requirements for the Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship

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

• Microsoft Office products, especially Word and Excel.
• Some college-level marketing coursework and/or experience.
• Comfort and familiarity with social media (e.g. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and blogging).
• Familiarity with HTML, basic video editing, and graphic design experience is a plus.

Other Details About the Social Media and Internet Marketing Internship

• This is an unpaid internship.
• This a part-time (10 to 20 hours/week) internship.  Hours are flexible.
• This is a remote internship with in-person meetings as necessary in Philadelphia.

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.

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:

• Frees us up to get our content out there! If we view our blog posts, articles, and ebooks as living and growing documents then we no longer have to wait for it to be “perfect” before publishing it through our channel of preference. Instead, we can post it, email it, publish it once it is “good enough” and then go back and research some other angels and make some further modifications and re-post it or re-package it at the appropriate time.
• Keeps our content relevant. While some of the principles expressed in our content may stay the same, new anecdotes, information, and discoveries are broadcast via the Internet, mobile devices, and the 24-hour news cycle everday. We might as well jump on the informational bandwagon and work any applicable viral information into our existing content. This expands our audience and keeps our existing audience coming back.
• Good for the search engines. Lastly, the search engines give preference to content that is frequently updated.

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:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
• Mad Staffing Blog

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

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

• Roseanne McDonald, Software Manager at Bryant Staffing on building a Facebook Page.
• Josephine Dimaggio, Recruiter at High Power Temps on developing a presence for herself and High Power on Linkedin and Twitter.

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:

• It’s so easy to build out a Facebook Fan Page, Linkedin profile, or Twitter account.  Once you see business value in one or more of these areas in social media, just get out there, and claim and build out your space!
• Promote your social media initiatives both offline and online.  If you’re launching a new Facebook Page for your small business, email an annoucement to your candidates, post an online press release, and print postcards to hand out at job fairs promoting the Facebook Page.
• Know your goals and be flexible with your tactics.  Clearly define your goals as you get involved with social media and be measuring your results, looking for actionable insights so you can see what’s working and what you need to change.
• Connect your networks.  As you get more involved in social media and on more networks it gets time consuming to maintain them all.  However, you can connect your networks so that you can update them all at once through tools like Hootsuite.com, Ping.fm, and the Twitter application on Linkedin.
• Lastly, your company’s presence on social media is really the sum of the activity and involvement of your individual staff.  If you want your business to have a strong online presence then you have to empower your staff to become more and more active in social media.

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
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

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
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

• Young men with so much potential lost on the battlefield.
• Veterans forever changed for better of for worse.
• Fatherless children.
• Widows.
• Civilians caught in the crossfire.

• While still a one-party state, over the last 25 years, Vietnam has opened up their markets to foreign investment, and the National Assembly, which is the highest representative body of the people, “has become more vocal and assertive” in carrying out its legislative duties.  Check out the U.S. Department of State’s background notes on Vietnam.
• In Iraq, things are still chaotic, but another round of competitive and open elections ocurred in March with higher than expected voter turnout despite violence and Sunni boycotts.  Checkout the New York Time’s analysis of Iraq.
• The renewed troop concentration in Afghanistan with refined tactics is definitely paying off in what used to be some of the worst provinces in the country.  Check out this ABC News story on how Marines are building trust and getting help from locals to clean up ground zero – as far as opium and the Taliban are concerned.

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
Connect with me on:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

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!

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:

• One way to get passionate about a topic, any topic, is to do a lot of research on it, which gets us vested in it.  We naturally get excited about things we know a lot about.  I just wrote a blog entry for the staffing industry on tax credits for employers.  I don’t naturally get excited about tax credits, but my passion buckets were filled to the brim after researching the subject and knowing that I had some helpful information to offer staffing executives and professionals.
• Secondly, if you’re not directly passionate about the topic you’re writing on, relate things you are passionate about to the main matter at hand.  For instance, take this series of blog posts – I’m more of a history buff than an Internet marketing guru; so I’ve found Internet marketing lessons amidst the figures, documents, and events of history.

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:

• Talk and listen to your audience for the real problems behind what they’re saying to you.
• What quick articles, blogs, or videos could you produce that can at least help people get the ball rolling in solving some of their problems.
• Think about problems you’ve overcome and ways you could tell your success story others.

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

• Problem: Employers don’t know how to make sense of all the legislation that’s flying out of DC.  Solution: Here’s a blog post that helps them makes sense of two tax credits they could take advantage of.
• Problem: With so much information, new websites, and activity regarding social media, executives and business professionals don’t know where to begin or what to do.  Solution: Started posting videos on very simple social media activities staffing professionals can build into their work lives that help build profitable relationships with prospects and candidates. 
• Problem: Staffing companies are facing higher unemployment costs across the country.  Solution: Posted a blog entry on one easy way staffing firms can get their recruiters place people on jobs who will help them reduce their unemployment costs.

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:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

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 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:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss

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

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!

• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss
• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss

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:

• Go to  HelpAReporterOut.com and signup to receive free emails that list out requests for sources/information from reporters.
• 3 times-a-day you will receive a HARO email listing about 50 specific requests from reporters under the following topics in addition to more general/miscellaneous requests:
  • Biotech and Healthcare
  • Business and Finance
  • Energy and Green Tech
  • Entertainment and Media
  • High Tech
  • Lifestyle and Fitness
  • Public policy and Government
  • Travel
• Scroll down the lists of requests and if you find something that fits your area of expertise, there are instructions on how to respond.
• If the reporter likes what you have to say, it’s free PR!

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:

• Twitter: http://twitter.com/everettreiss
• Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/everettreiss