1. Keep it short. 45 seconds is enough to get your point across. A minute is acceptable. 1 and 1/2 minutes is really testing our patience. You hit the 2 minute mark and your name is beginning to get written in the black list. If you hit 3 minutes or longer you will mostly be ignored. A voicemail is an archaic device that was intended to leave a quick announcement or a request for a call back. TXT/SMS serves much better as a quick announcement system, and a missed call usually will prompt a call-back.

2. Building up on #1. Avoid rambling on; don't tell a story, don't brainstorm, don't pitch, just get to the point of what you need to say starting at the beep.

3. Keep it in point. Do not leave a voicemail if you're doing something else. Not only is it rude and disrespectful, it is ineffective and at the end of your voicemail you will have wasted 2 - 3 minutes of your day and the other person's day. If you know David Allen's philosophy of GTD, 2 minutes can make or break your day.

4. Leave your name and phone number, clearly. Twice. Once at the beginning, once at the end. I do it twice at the end so that the person listening has a chance to write it down, or remember it easily. This isn't so important if the person already knows you, but if they don't, you risk being ignored or lost in the shuffle.

I could explain more, I could rant, bitch and moan about all the wasted time listening to voicemails, knowing quite well I'm just going to call you back and you're going to repeat all of it. I hope you know that this advice is golden, and I think these 4 points should be sufficient. Don't you agree with me that long voicemails suck?

The post Voicemail, the bane of every entrepreneur’s time. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

William Pitcher even asked me if I thought the potential for EA was really there, I told him, yes. Bigger than FB and Twitter? he asked. I told him... "maybe."

I don't think it will ever be as big as FB or Twitter, or even Linked in. These three are the Three Kings of Social Networks, as I call them, and the reason Empire Avenue will never be as big as any of them, is because EAv actually depends on those sites for its services.

You see, EmpireAvenue is one of many attempts --albeit, one of the successful ones-- at measuring influence online. How much is your content worth? I think that is the real question that gets answered by the site.

The site works in two ways, depending on your opinion of it. One popular view is that it's just a game; the other view, MY preffered view is that it is a super powerful networking and filtering tool. I take it a little more seriously than most, but then again I take a lot of the things I do online more seriously than most people do. After all, I've been making my living with online resources, since 1999.

EA gives you a handle, or rather you pick it, and this becomes your "Stock Ticker" akin to a corporation's stock ticker in the NYSE. After you join, they'll give you a number of Eaves to start with (their own fictitious currency). Mine is (e)OG. You can change it anytime you want... for a price.

Once you start and join, the rest is up to you, you can buy into other people you find interesting, amusing, or simply when you want to show support for their cause. Other people engage in what they call "reciprocity" and I call bullshit. Pardon my french but I stand by my post in reciprocity.

Reciprocity is good only if its genuine, otherwise its just a cheap way to game the system, whatever system that is.

With that mini rant/intro I'll try to get back to the original title of the post. Have we reached a tipping point for EmpireAvenue to become mainstream? And I mean mainstream, only in the circle of social media enthusiasts. For if you really think about it and look up some numbers, Twitter is not really "mainstream" yet, most people (despite what you believe) are NOT on twitter.

Don't believe me? Ask 3 of your neighbors what their twitter handle is? Ask your Tax person who they "follow" on Twitter? Ask your doctor where you can follow his updates... I'd venture to guess that 8 out of 10 people will simply give you a googley-eyed look and wonder WTF are you talking about.

Certainly EA has gone through a tremendous explosion over the past few months. Some big names in the tech world, social networking arena and other fields have joined. And I wonder, why haven't others? Is it really a waste of time like many people say? I don't think so (more on that later).

You can now find people like Chris Pirillo, Darren Rowse, even big name brands like Ford and ATT. But aside from those two brands, do you even know who the other people are? I happen to know of Chris from years back because he's *been* there from the get go, in the tech industry. As I was learning systems administration and computer support for Windows in the early days of my career, his posts would often come up with solutions to various problems.  As for Darren, he is one of, if not *the* most popular blogger in the planet when it comes to monetizing the whole blogging thing. He makes millions blogging.

I would be curious if all the people I invited in the early days are still hesitant to join, do they still think this is a time waster? Do you think that way? I can tell you that I've enjoyed the site quite a bit. People wonder what "business" value I've gotten from it, and I can't pinpoint it, but I've gotten some true value. I'll give you a couple examples, I met Adriel Hampton on there, and eventually he reached out for some website help. He's a happy camper now and I thank him for approaching me for help, and I thank EA for creating this space where I met him. I also humbly help moderate the WordPress group *in* Empire Avenue, where people ask random wordpress related questions. This group gave me a connection to other wordpress professionals that I probably would never have met.

I love EmpireAvenue. Truly, I do.

I've met a few other people on the site and now follow them and interact with them on Twitter. I have found some amazing blogs to read that would probably never have come up in my normal circles of friends or searches.

But EA isn't mainstream, nor do I think it will ever be. I think by the time social networks are really mainstream, it will be something new, something different.

Thanks for reading this rant. And if you end up joining EmpireAvenue, let me know if I can help. After all, helping is what I do.

The post Tipping point for Empire Avenue, incoherent thoughts and ramblings. appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So... Last year I I conducted a contest for a client, the contest was a design contest. The purpose was to come up with a logo. After sometime, we came up with the guidelines and requirements for the company logo. Shortly thereafter we started up the contest using a website called LogoMyWay. The service is pretty straight forward. You pick an amount as the prize, the website takes a percentage and you select the parameters of the contest. As the contest runs, designers all over the world are able to read your requirements, see any collateral you chose to share with them, and even ask questions. A designer can participate on any contest he or she wants and there are usually anywhere from 90 to 150 design contests going on at one time. To me it sounded like a great idea, and it turned out that I was right. My client received over 1000 logo submissions. From those I would say about 500 were really original, while the rest split somewhat unevenly between bad, copycats, or revisions based on feedback.

We ran that contest for 14 days and that was an excellent amount of time. It allowed us to give the designers constant feedback and it provided us with 1117 total submissions and a good 15 - 20 great logos, . After the contest was over, we received the vector files from the designer. We thanked all the participants and ranked all the remaining logos into the top 10 spots. We were able to get a lot of different options, all of them based on our requirements. The requirements can really be anything you want to portray on your logo. You could include keywords, objects, symbolism, special fonts, desired style. Express your business values, your target audience, your ideology or anything you would like to convey in your logo. Make the contest private if you would prefer.

Based on the success of that contest, I decided to run my own contest when it came time to get a new logo. As you might know, I have had a job for the past 10 years, and I've been an IT Consultant, and Systems Administrator for hire for about half that time. Recently, after quitting everything I had that was great I decided to pursue The dream, my own business, so I decided to officially launch my consulting services business. The name is pretty straight forward, Oscarstech. The logo had to contain that in the design and also have a symbol or bug as some call it that is unique and can symbolize the different aspects of my business. Or it an just be unique and eye catching.

After you're finished reading this post, feel free to rank the existing logos for my contest

Turns out that the contest has been a success so far, I ran a 5 day contest this time. In fact it ended today (Wednesday). One small problem is that a bunch of people submitted last minute designs, making it difficult to pick a winner. I asked the guys at LogoMyWay if they could extend the contest. They have obliged and I have until Monday to receive submissions and to give some feedback to the existing designers so they can make adjustments if they like. Something that is actually new this time around with the second contest I run is that they have a feature where you can share the contest out to friends and family or whoever you want so they can rate the submissions.

So far I like a lot of the logos I've seen but I'm glad I have some more time to make a decision.

My contest is going now until Monday. Then I have 14 days to pick a winner, but I think I'll pick the winner within a few days. If you want to see it, go visit and rate the contest here.

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After throwing up something I ate the night before at a bar, I felt a lot of pressure in my head, and looking in the mirror revealed my face red and teary eyed because of throwing up. I know this happens so I thought it was normal. I felt better pretty much right after throwing up a couple of times. Later that day I went to brush my teeth and get ready to go out to dinner, I looked up at the mirror and there it was, a big cloud of blood creeping towards my iris and I think I actually yelled. It freaked me out, WTF was that. I looked it up online right away and after a few scary finds, everything said it would be okay. I just burst a blood vessel everyone suggested. Sure, its easy to say but when you look in the mirror and that thing keeps expanding, I'll tell you, its scary.

Trusting the likes of WebMD, Wikipedia, I was reassured it would all just be okay and go away in a couple days. That my friend is a bunch of baloney, The next day, the eyes were worse, both of them now had lots of red and it kept creeping in towards the center of my eye, it made my eyes water just looking at them. Monday morning came and about 3 in the morning, I just couldn't sleep anymore, I had to go check out the eyes again. Sure enough they were even worse!

I decided to go to the doctor, and after a boring wait watching some crappy nature show I got in to see the Dr. He checked out my eyes and found that it was in fact a lot of bleeding but it had stopped. He also explained that it was normal for this to happen from time to time --all the while I'm thinking, bullshit!-- and that some people get this just from sneezing. He proceeded to explain why this is not a problem or would become one. The bleeding happens at one plane in your eyeball, while your lens, iris, and other important sections of your eye are in different and sometimes separate planes. The only way for this to "bleed into" a sensitive are would be to have some sort of trauma, like a stab wound or something like that. So technically it would be okay but it wasn't going to take a couple days to clear out, it took a couple days just to stop spreading!

Well the Dr. sent me in my way and said it would take 2 - 6 weeks to clear out and there's nothing much we could do about it. He said nothing I do can help it except go about my normal day, eventually, as you see in some of the pictures, it will go away and that should be the end of it. It was kind of freaky to have my eyes like that for a while. I got people staring at the store, I got people that couldn't look at me in the eye when talking because their eyes would water. And of course I had my co-workers and friends wanting to see the eyes everyday just for the weirdness factor.

Some people knew what it was, they just wondered how it happened, some other people thought it was pink eye, and all the while it made for an interesting conversation topic for a while. I now just want my eyes to go back to normal, most people can't make eye contact after they look at the eye that looks the worse, they will just keep avoiding eye contact from there; its rather amusing.

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We went to The Counter the other day, there is a new location in Irvine. If you've never heard of it, I recommend you give it a try. Their thing is "Custom Built Burgers", They are the best non-fast food burgers I've ever had. I think this is largely in part because you can put whatever you want in them. Everyone is bound to have different taste preferences so it fits everyone. If you don't like onions, don't get them! Maybe you like pickles olives and bluecheese with a one pounder all beef patty. Who knows? you have so many combinations to choose from. The burgers in this picture and the ones in flickr are the 1/3lb size. They also have 2/3 and 1 pound. I can't imagine eating 1lb burger. They have a small notice in their menu... the weigh of the burger is *after* cooking so you truly get 1 pound of meat.

You can always make a classic burger if you want, beef, tomato, lettuce and american cheese. Or you can mix it up with other ingredients like red bell peppers, crumbled feta cheese, olives, sprouts, grilled onion, mushrooms, avocado, etc. If you don't like beef then they have other meat choices as well, like chicken.

I will probably make my way over to The Counter again at least a few times in the next year. Its one of those places that you'll want to go back again and again, just to try a different combination each time. Cheers.

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