For me, the experience in Minds has been all over the place. It has been mostly positive, but not without its woes. I may talk about those in detail later, but for now, I'd like to keep this short.

At first, I was excited about it, then I became frustrated and left. This has happened twice or three times. But the promise of it keeps bringing me back to see if it has progressed. To see if the issues I found with it have been addressed.

The promise of protection for freedom of speech, uncensored interactions, true reach and just the philosophy of open source and everything that comes with it are very enticing for me, so that's why I keep coming back.

This should be important for you too, especially as more and more issues arise with the big social networks, like Facebook and Twitter. Only time will tell whether Minds continues to respect privacy and freedom.

But I'm back on Minds now. If you want to follow me over there, I'm under @OscarGonzalez.

I'm very happy and excited although a bit cautious with the network now. Cautious because when you're a blogger or social media professional, a digital marketer, like me, investing time into a site that isn't going to make it past the next six months can be a painful experience.

It sucks when you figure out how a site works, and you put a lot of time and effort into it and then they announce abruptly that they're going out of business like vid.me did.

Minds seems different now. The UI has been totally revamped, new features are active and have been rolled out and they are using a spiffy cryptocurrency system instead of fiat currency like when they started. That is not to say it is without problems, but it's better than before, much better.

I'm pretty confident to say that Minds is going to be around for a while. I even dare to say now that many of the issues that have kept me from spending more time on the site have been addressed, and it even seems like they're growing up a bit.

I recently reconnected with Bill Ottman, I congratulated him about the nice improvements on the site, and a few weeks later because he was in the Joe Rogan podcast.

With that kind of commitment, I'm willing to put some of the issues I disliked about the site aside and give it another chance.

In fact, I'm trying to help remove one of the main obstacles for me and other people like me to really embrace the site. This specific initiative is related to social media shares, but I'll leave it at that for now until I get something actually tangible to share.

But I was pleasantly surprised to find that they have an experimental section. Similar to how Snapchat lets you get early development builds to test out new features before they're rolled out to the general population. Or like how Gmail used to have a fun labs section in the early days.

This is one good reason to come and give Minds another try. Features like this show maturity in the software and the development of their roadmap, so that's extremely promising.

If you're interested in checking out minds, head on over to Minds.com and find me as OscarGonzalez. Talk to you soon!

ps. Don't forget about the 30 day One Funnel Challenge, starts in 4 days!

The post Minds.Com Is Growing Up. We’re Waiting for You appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As I worked on that video and did some research, I found that beanie babies aren't something that you can make money from anymore. Unless you have one of the really really really rare ones then you're not likely to make any money.

Some of the ones you see in the video sell for as high as $4.99! And that's only if they're new.

Remember when the beanie babies craze was going on? People were spending hundreds of dollars looking for the "good ones" and then selling them for thousands. It reminds me of that PBS documentary The Botany of Desire. I recommend you watch it if you get a chance. It's interesting to see how things are valued depending on human desire and context.

To find the really rare beanie babies, you need to be a collector, a serious collector. Besides that, the rare ones aren't just the limited edition TY beanie babies, they are the ones that were limited edition AND have a defect.

For example, I found that one of the angel-looking ones, I think is called "Halo" can be worth a few hundred dollars, if and only if you have the one that came with a brown nose instead of the regular black nose.

Yeah, good luck finding one of those. Nonetheless, it was interesting going through the bin of stuff I found.

So it turns out, at the end of the day most of these were junk. A few worked out great as toys for Picasso and my kids wanted to keep a few of them. I guess I don't have a million dollar find in my attic this time around.

The post Found a Cash Cow! Can You Even Make Money From Beanie Babies? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I had a chance to interview Heather Havenwood, author of the book Sexy Boss. Always staying ahead of the curve, Heather gave us some insights into an amazing technique to improve your digital marketing game.

This interview is all about Chatbots.

Even though I have played with chatbots quite a bit, I am not currently using them for my pages.

Also, Heather's book:Sexy Boss - How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rule Book for Money, Success and Even Sex, and How You Can Too!

I know I'm sharing this almost a year after I recorded it, but it is still relevant as the chatbot race hasn't been settled yet.

Affiliate Summit takes place throughout the year and all over the world so take a look at it if you want to learn more about Affiliate marketing and related fields.

As more companies join the chatbot world, how do you feel about it? I asked my friends about it on Facebook and they had mixed reactions to it. I'd love to hear how you feel about them.

The post Interview About Chatbots with Heather Havenwood aka Sexy Boss appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It all depends on the response this video gets, but I know suicide is definitely a taboo topic.

I couldn't add the word in the Youtube video description for fear that Youtube might penalize the video. Tubebuddy extension suggested that it may hurt my monetization options.

And my fears are not unfounded. It's not just the warning from Tubebuddy. We see censorship and demonetization on Youtube daily.

This video is for my friends and those of you in business. Believe me, the struggle is real. The struggle is lonely, but you've got options, and not just one.

The post Shhh… We Don’t Talk About it –Taboo Topic in Business appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I haven't dug into why Twittercounter shut down but I'm guessing they weren't making enough money with their paid placements and other enhancements to their stats.

Their announcement was simple and straightforward but didn't offer much of an explanation:

Sorry to hear this. Your data was very helpful to my org over the years.

— Magnetic Dynamo (@magneticdynamo) November 2, 2018

Some people on Twitter felt left out because they were paying members and they weren't notified, but a quick email seems to have solved that.

Other people seemed to be sad that the service was going away. I totally missed the announcement until just recently when I started this blog post but I didn't get a chance to publish it.

To be honest, I'm going to miss the TwitterCounter system. They have been around for a long time and pretty much became part of the Twitter ecosystem.

Thanks for all the stats guys! Best of luck on your next venture.

So the TwitterCounter shutdown seems to be just like general business failure, it's already updated on Wikipedia and there's a footnote in there in reference to a hacking incident coming from Turkey I guess but it's unclear if that has anything to do with its decomision.

So as far as I can tell, no foul play for now.

But in other news...

No foul play there, unlike the Chipotle incident! Now, that's controversial right now, isn't it? There's a whole lot of people on both sides although I think it's going to unravel even more and totally lean towards one side.

What do you think? Do you think we've heard everything we have about that or we'll we hear about it again soon when more unravels for one reason or another?

Here's PhillyD's take on it, starting on the first story:

Here's Tim Pool's on the Chipotle incident, titled: Chipotle is LYING About The Racial Profiling Controversy:

Our world is going crazy, but you keep your eye on the prize. Focus on the good stuff around you, especially with Thanksgiving coming up just around the corner.

Be thankful for what you have and Happy Thanksgiving!

The post Twittercounter.com Closed Down on November 5 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about.

I'm creating a tutorial, coaching and special resource center for Internet marketers and budding online entrepreneurs. This will be my first paid membership site and I'm very proud of it so far. It's also a portal to my coaching services.

While I was getting bogged down with a faulty system over the couple weeks I started designing the framework for the platform and it's getting close.

I'm going to need a group of my readers and VIP members to run through some of the courses and give me some feedback, in exchange I'll be offering access to courses and discounts for future products.

You can read the email I sent out in my broadcast archive. It's titled "hey..." And let me know if you're interested. While you're at it, make sure you're subscribed to my email list so you don't miss important announcements like this one, click here to join my VIP list.

The post I Sent an Email to My Vip List the Other Day. Did You Get It? appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

John Rothrock was sporting a bright blue suit with a white hats pattern on it. As he was getting swarmed with attendees trying to ask him what was up with the suit and hoping to get their picture taken with John, I jumped in to ask him what was going on with the outfit.

It turns out that the suit is part of his employee engagement campaign. You see, John thinks outside the box. It was refreshing to hear him talk about his business and his approach with the same passion that compels him to wear a suit like this to a conference full of Instagrammers, Youtubers, and other various social media enthusiasts.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg6_h50lDMO/

I asked John, what were his top three tips for those companies that are in a seemingly dull, or boring industry. You know the ones, they are accountants, auto-mechanics, dentists, dry-cleaners, hair and beauty salons, insurance brokers and similar.

Interview with John Rothrock from Yale Cleaners

I agree with John that any company can use social media to grow their business, but they have to approach it differently than the popular Instagram-ready industries, like lifestyle, food, and fashion.

You have to be creative, and with the risk of sounding cliche, you have to be social.

More from Yale Cleaners

https://www.instagram.com/p/BZY7bKGgnRz/?taken-by=yalecleaners

https://www.instagram.com/p/BUwaq-4gtv-/?taken-by=yalecleaners

Who is John Rothrock?

John Rothrock is the President and CEO of Yale Cleaners, a local family business focused on providing high quality, same day dry cleaning with exceptional customer service. See more: Yale Cleaners.

The post 3 Tips for “Boring” Industries in Social Media appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Quickly I can put whatever song I want. The playlists are great, the social component is good and allows me to hear what some of my friends are listening to.

Their own discovery feature is good too and the curated playlists are some of the best I've come across.

So why did I quit Spotify?

I quit paying for Spotify because I'm on a mission to increase my productivity. I want to make 2018 be the year I kill it like no other year.

I'm making a lot of shifts in my life. Starting with my time management using Time Doctor. I will also be implementing the stuff taught on: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. -- Currently, my house & office is a disaster, almost worthy of a show of hoarders, almost.

But I have been paying attention to my habits when I'm on my computer. One of the bad habits is constantly checking FB or Twitter, just to see what's up. I'm already changing that, I cut back a lot of time I spend on there.

Another bad habit I have is trying to find something to play on the background while I work. Sometimes I feel it may even be an excuse to not get to the stuff I really need to work on.

Needless to say, this is a huge timesink because I end up spending a lot of time on Spotify looking for "just the right song."

Sometimes I'll do the same on Youtube, looking through my "watch later" playlist hoping to find something I can play in the background while I blog or try to complete another work-related task.

So while I was at Affiliate Summit I was talking to Stephan Spencer and he recommended Focus @ Will. Focus @ will is a music service specifically designed to help you focus.

I'm trying it now and it's awesome, the trial is free for two weeks, then it's the same price as Spotify. Actually is five cents cheaper.

Cheaper and Better

I' don't feel like spending money on two services which are intended to do the same thing for me. So I'm opting for Focus @ Will only for now since it has the benefit of helping me focus and get more stuff done.

I've already been testing it and it works. My trial will expire soon and I intend to keep the service.

The free ad-supported version of Spotify will have to suffice for the other times where I just need the music for the kids or for entertainment.

If you're looking to step up your game and want to have something play in the background, something that actually helps you instead of distracting you then give Focus @ Will a try. It's free to try.

The post I Quit Spotify. You Should Too If You Want to Get More Done appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Today, Twitter is vastly different. Most people come to Twitter to absorb information about their favorite topics. The other majority is looking for information curated by the people they consider experts or knowledgeable about a specific topic.

The landscape of the Twitter world has changed dramatically due to technical changes and shifts in internet culture. That's not to say that you can't make personal connections and grow your business using Twitter.

One of the notable things that has changed for businesses is the fact that it's almost required for a business to have a Twitter account.

Having an account isn't enough though. It's like a muscle, you have to use it and exercise it if you want it to grow and give you results.

You, as a spokesperson for the business, must nurture and work on the account regularly. It's great to talk to your prospects, existing customers and anyone that might be friendly to you or your cause.

But if you have that covered, what else can you do to leverage Twitter?

If you want more Twitter traffic, share your content on Twitter

Sharing your own content on social media must be a part of your plan to grow your business and influence. This sentiment is shared by most of the top online business people and influencers. Even if they don't tell you that they're doing this, their actions usually reflect this.

But some of the helpful social media and online marketing experts, like Neil Patel, actually teach these techniques. Neil suggests that we share 10+ articles which go back to our content, each day.

He also talks about how to grow your audience on Twitter fast on this video:

But Twitter can be exhausting, after you talk to people, and respond to conversations pertinent to your interests and objectives, you may feel too tired or overwhelmed to share your own content. And didn't Neil say to share your posts 10 times each day IF you already have a lot of followers?

What if you don't have 200,000 followers or more like Neil does?

The actual number of times you should share your own articles each day may vary by a number of factors, like how many articles you have and how many followers you have.

If you have a few hundred followers, you may annoy them really fast if you share 10 or more articles about your own stuff every day; this could hinder your growth and hurt existing or budding relationships.

But you can determine the right number of articles for yourself by experimenting. Maybe you share 10 articles total, four that are yours, and six about the industry by other influencers or media outlets. Maybe you can switch that ratio.

Play with those numbers, but remember that if you want more Twitter traffic, share more stuff on Twitter. BTW, if you agree with that by now, do me a favor and hit the following Tweetable quote just by clicking on it.

If you are skeptical or hesitant to share a lot of your own stuff, I totally understand, in fact, I had a question about sharing other articles instead of mine and how I should split that ratio. I didn't expect it, but Neil actually answered my question right away:

By the way, my traffic did go up, significantly.

But even if you could magically determine the exact number of times you should share your own content, the problem remains the same for you. If you don't schedule all these articles at once, you have to consciously share the articles every day at random times throughout the day.

This is exhausting, and time-consuming. Add to that the fact that you are also trying to respond to people on Twitter or initiate conversations, and run a business, you may feel like giving up quickly.

I get it, it's a lot of work.

But technology and tools are here to make our lives easier, don't overcomplicate things.

Use the right techniques and tools, as Neil suggests and as I show you in the video below, you can schedule all your own content to be shared in advance, on a set schedule. You can set this up once a week, or once a month and schedule all of your content.

On a future blog post, I'll show you how to weave your own content with niche content by other influencers in your industry so that you can keep a healthy and interesting balance of content. Make sure you subscribe, or follow me so you don't miss it if you want to see that.

But here's the video I made explaining how to use Buffer's power scheduler feature to accomplish what we've been talking about.

This is one of the strategies that has helped me triple my Twitter followers. By the way, if you aren't following me, you can right here: @Notagrouch.

TL;DR

In conclusion, you should have a Twitter account to help you grow your business. One of the strategies to grow on Twitter and get more traffic from Twitter to feed your business is to share relevant content that you've created on top of the regular, one-to-one interactions with your followers.

The easiest way to do this is to schedule all your own content in advance using a tool like Buffer coupled with the technique I demonstrated in the video.

I'm in the draft mode for another post that will simplify this process even further, and will make you a Twitter powerhouse without breaking the bank. Make sure you stick around or subscribe to my list to get notified when that comes out. Of course, you can also get notified if you follow me on Twitter.

Have you tried this before? Are you hesitant? I love teaching and sharing my expertise, but I also want to hear back from you about this and would love to know if you've done this, or not. If yes, what kind of results have you seen and if you haven't done this, why not?

The post How To Schedule Your Content on Twitter Once a Month appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But I see a resurge on Twitter and I see some good things that are going on. But I'm also deeply concerned about its apparent censorship and favoritism displayed over the past year and more so in the past few weeks.

If you haven't kept up with these developments, apparently, Twitter has been revoking the verified status from many accounts. It appears that Twitter is reviewing its verification program and will probably be removing the verification status from many more accounts.

It seems that some accounts claim that they've been unfairly targeted and singled out for suspensions and even permanent bans as a result of this "review", because of opposing viewpoints or what they call "wrong-think" like in  George Orwell's 1984 novel.

Twitter never comments on specific cases, but usually points questions and requests for comments to their Terms of Service document which like most T.O.S. documents is vague and even ambiguous; this allows for conspiracy theories, and alternate possibilities to be considered plausible by some.

Many argue, in contrast, that other accounts that are more in line with Twitter's political bias are allowed to remain active and verified despite exhibiting similar behavior as that displayed by the accounts that have been reprimanded arguably because of holding the wrong set of ideas or opinion.

You can't really change any of that... but this is what you can do.

And at the end of the day, you can't do much about Twitter's decisions anyway. But you know what you can do, is be a good person, be a decent individual and stop doing these three things on Twitter.

Trust me, they make you look like an amateur and it's time somebody tells it to you straight. I'm going to make this blog post mandatory reading for all my would-be customers and existing customers.

So without further ado, stop doing these things that make you a jerk on Twitter:

#1 Sending Automatic DMs

This is one of the worse things to have ever been turned into a thing on Twitter. If you follow me on Twitter, you surely have seen my top-most pinned tweet.

I've had it on for most of the year and it gets a good reaction.

https://twitter.com/notagrouch/status/828005553519472640

Nobody cares about your life's story in your auto dm. Nobody clicks on the links you send in there. Essentially, if you use Auto DMs when someone follows you, you're a jerk. You're forcing us to look at some crappy message and usually, you haven't even taken the time to  look at our account let alone follow us for a while so we can actually get to know each other.

I'll take that back. I'm sorry, I give you the benefit of the doubt, maybe you didn't know prior to reading this blog post. Ok, but now you know so if you're still using Auto DMs, now, you're a jerk. Ok, I'll grant you a grace period, you can take a few minutes and then go turn off those automatic DMs.

Sending auto dms on Twitter is like throwing garbage out the window as you drive down the street, or like that crappy junk mail you still get delivered to your home address. Do the senders don't know that those pieces of mail survive only the walk to the nearest trash bin?

In Twitter, it's digital littering, you're doing nothing but creating digital garbage.

Please, don't. Just don't.

If you don't know how you're sending automatic direct messages because you set them up a long time ago and don't remember how, just click here to go to your Twitter apps permission page and click on "revoke access" next to all the apps listed there that you don't recognize.

This will reset your Twitter account's permissions and prevent 3rd party apps from sending those automatic junk messages.

#2 Sending Thank you for nothing messages.

Yes, it is absolutely true that you should acknowledge your new followers and engage with them. You should also engage with your existing followers and build connections with them. This is the reason we call Twitter a social network.

But don't confuse digital garbage for gratitude.

When it comes to Twitter, stop the automatic @ mentions messages with generic, repetitive and boring messages. Just like auto DMs, they're digital garbage.

If auto DMs are like mailbox flyers that are sent to you via postal service, then thanks-for-nothing tweets are the maybe-more-annoying door and car flyers you find after you come home or back to your car in the parking lot. More garbage and you're forced to look at it. And if you're sending these automatically, yep, you're a jerk.

These noise maker tweets sound a bit like this:

Thanks to my top #twitterfam followers (or some hashtag that sounds like a community exists): @mention1 @mention2 @mention3 @mention4 #famlov https://somefreejunk.net.

You don't need to thank everyone that follows you as if they just did you a favor. That's what people do on Twitter they follow each other. Instead, take it a step further and learn something about the person and comment on that. "Thank you for following me" messages are so 2008, and digital junk.

Generally, Twitter users fall prey to become these apps' advertising parrot-heads and use them with the promise of gaining a following or getting more "social mentions" which can be valued by some social influence measuring tools --also useless, but I digress.

At the end of the day, these tools primary purpose seems to be to generate digital garbage.

Instead, spend 15 - 20 minutes each day doing what I do to remain personal, and engaged with people on Twitter. It makes Twitter relevant again, believe it or not, there is a growing active user base on Twitter.

I explain how I engage with new users next.

What should you do instead?

From personal experience, thanks to Rewst.com and a dedicated 15 to 30-minute planned daily activity on Twitter, I've been averaging about 40 new followers each day. Thank you and welcome, all of you!

But to show gratitude, I take the time to check out each new follower and either like a few of their latest interesting tweets or maybe I'll follow them back. By the way, you don't have to use Rewst.com, it just makes things easier.

Another thing I do to show appreciation and acknowledgment to new followers is to retweet one or two of their most recent interesting tweets. I use Buffer to spread the tweets over a few hours or a few days.

Even doing an @ mention responding to a specific tweet they posted recently, or a compliment or positive feedback about their profile may go a long way.

These actions show you are there, and you're active and not just a twitter-bot pushing a message out. Taking the time to acknowledge your new followers shows gratitude.

Seriously, the other automatic, canned junk is bad. Forget it. Be real, be genuine and be there, even if it's just a couple times each day. Automatic "thank you @mentions" Just like I advise you for Twitter auto DMs... Just don't.

#3 Tweet Only your products

I'm a big proponent of automation. But you should work on intelligent automation. Once you get a work-flow going where you can read and share interesting articles on Twitter easily and timely, you can start sharing content that your followers may be interested in without any additional effort.

This video shows you how you can schedule all your tweets easily.

You can use something like Buffer or Hootsuite to schedule tons of tweets in advance. But just be careful with this convenience.

Don't fall for the temptation to tween only for your products or services. You should have a mix of content.

How much is too much self-promotion?

Advice tends to suggest that we should be following a rough 80/20 split where you share industry news, relevant events information, quotes by captains of industry, interesting reports, case studies and news for about 80 percent of the time, and you share your own content the remaining 20 percent of the time.

If you are on Twitter and spend 15 to 30 minutes each day tweeting and engaging, then you'll find that you can be tweeting around 20 times organically.

Add to that count, 10 or so tweets you can pre-schedule as you read the type of content I suggest you share above. You could easily be tweeting anywhere from 30 - 40 tweets each day effortlessly. And that still doesn't count your own content.

Some people claim that if you were to just tweet your own content, you would lose followers and they'd feel like enough is enough.

But, I think if you're tweeting 40 or more times each day like I describe above, it's a fair ratio if you want to insert your own tweets 10 times a day. Mix them around in Buffer and continue to engage.

If you're trying to keep track of growth, you can also use Rewst.com to keep track of your growth. You could also tabulate the data yourself using Google Sheets, and I think Twittercounter.com will also help you track following and followers.

The big asterisk disclaimer on there is that my opinion is you should be engaging and sharing other content too to balance out your own content and to understand what others are sharing around your own topics of interest.

This means you could schedule around 8 to 10 tweets every day to your top 100 blog posts and go through them every 10 days or so. This will help you get a good amount of exposure and keep your followers looking at your content.

Neil Patel suggests you share at least 10 of your articles each day and look at the results based on the data --see video below: How to Get More Twitter Traffic (fast).

I tend to follow his advice and I usually share about 8 or 10 tweets of my own content and the rest are curated tweets.

I follow a ratio of roughly 50/50, and I think as long as the content is interesting, useful and valuable, even following Neil Patel's advice and only sharing 10 articles for your own blog may be fine.

After all if your own blog post isn't worth sharing, why did you write it at all right? And if it's worth sharing, why not share it?

Conclusion

These three things you need to stop doing on Twitter may seem a bit like rants, but based on my personal experience and in that experience of most of my clients, these are some of the biggest things that annoy other Twitter users and generally just contributes to a bad overall experience.

I'm not a big fan of telling you how to use any of the social networks. You should do what works for you. But if you insist on doing these things I listed, you have to wonder if annoying a large part of potential new followers is something that works for you.

Full automated Twitter accounts exist, and some of them have tons of followers, but they tend to be single-purpose announcement type of accounts. You can assume that all the unsolicited advice I provided here is meant for accounts that represent a person or a brand and want to actively grow and generate more engagement and traffic to their blogs.

The post 3 Things You’re Doing on Twitter That Make You a Jerk appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

But Youtube has some flaws, and one of those is the subscription system. If you use Youtube on a regular basis, you know that most channels encourage you to subscribe to them so you can stay up to date with their videos.

Obviously, after a while, you may end up being subscribed to hundreds or even thousands of Youtube channels.  What happens then is that Youtube can't notify you of all the updates. It wouldn't be practical.

Youtube came up with a solution for this, and they introduced the "subscription bell," a little icon that is available next to the subscription button on each channel. This bell icon lets you tell YouTube that you want "all notifications" from this channel. You can think of it as a priority status for that subscription compared to the other subscriptions.

But this doesn't solve the problem of too many notifications. You may have a thousand subscriptions and clicked the bell on 300 of those to receive all their alerts. But if those 300 channels are very active, then this is not a solution either.

I got sick of this notification mayhem and decided to unsubscribe from all Youtube channels so I could start from a blank slate. I went to the Youtube settings to look for a way to unsubscribe from all channels. No luck! Youtube wouldn't want me to unsubscribe from all channels because it would go against their goal to keep me on their site for a longer period of time.

So I went to use one of my favorite tools to make an unsubscribe script for Youtube. This tool is called iMacros, it's free. Even though it works with Firefox or Chrome, I think it works much better with Firefox, so that's what I used.

The following video shows you how it works and some of the basics. After the video, there are a few notes and also a download option for the script so you can just start using it yourself right away.

How to unsubscribe from all youtube channels, notes.

You need to install iMacros as an extension for Firefox.

If you want to subscribe to some channels after you have unsubscribed from all, I recommend that you back up your subscriptions first. You'll find the backup option on the bottom right of your Subscription management page. This option will let you download an OPML file which you can read with an RSS reader like Feedly.

Use this unsubscribe method at your own risk! Youtube doesn't have an interest in making it easy to mass-unsubscribe from all channels; they have an interest in selling advertising. One of their goals is to keep you on the site as long as possible, and they accomplish this by trying to show you content you would be interested in based on your previous watch history and subscriptions.

Using a script to unsubscribe is probably not something Youtube would endorse or encourage so use it your own risk. It's for this reason that I deliberately made the script with lots of pauses and time delays. The script is intended to be convenient, not to be fast.

If you are pushing the boundaries and Youtube decides to prevent you from unsubscribing quickly, you'll see a screen like this when running the script:

All you have to do at that point is wait a minute or two and then start the script again.

You can run the script manually, and it will unsubscribe you from 25 channels. Just use the "Play" button.

To run the script mostly automatically you should use the "Play (Loop)" option and specify the "Max" number of loops to run through. I ran the script ten times at a time, and this made it so that I unsubscribed from about 250 channels at a time. See screenshot below:

You'll notice that the script has a screenshot command, this is to take a screenshot of your subscriptions before it unsubscribes you from the first 25 listed on that page. If you don't want to keep screenshots, you can just delete that entire line. Screenshots are saved to the designated "Downloads" folder for iMacros.

If you want to remove the time delays (not recommended), you can delete the lines that say this:

SET !VAR1 EVAL("var randomNumber=Math.floor(Math.random()*4 + 2); randomNumber;")
WAIT SECONDS={{!VAR1}}

I recommend if you're going to "loop" the script to do a few hundred unsubscriptions at a time, you leave the last time delay so that there's a pause each time that the loop starts over. This delay may prevent Youtube from flagging your account or limiting you and showing you the 504 error I described above.

I was able to run the script on ten loops, and it only gave me the 504 error twice, depending on your Youtube usage and other factors you may not see it at all or you may see it more frequently. If you see the error every time it loops, you should log out of Youtube, clear your cache and log back in.

For more documentation and information on iMacros, you may want to take a look at the extensive documentation they offer in their Wiki here.

The script is here. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The script is herehttps://notagrouch.com/wp-content/uploads/youtube-unsubscribe.zip. Download it to your computer, put it into one of the iMacro folders, then play it through Firefox using the iMacro commands.

The post How To Reset Your Youtube Subscriptions appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

My wife walked into the room the other day and asked me: Do you want to do a 100 day challenge with me? This caught my attention and I asked: What do we have to do each day?

She left it open to each of us. She's been on an amazing weight loss journey so she wants to do 100 days of 10,000 or more steps per day. She's already lost a lot of weight, so she's looking for ways to keep going and reach her ultimate goal so this makes sense for her.

To be honest, I could do with some weight loss myself, but I picked a different challenge. I'm doing 100 video & blog post challenge.

Here are the rules: Starting on June 1, produce 100 videos and 100 blog posts in 100 days. I guess that makes it just one rule. I

I deliberately left out any specifics about making one video per day, or anything else. I'm going to keep it simple. We have some family trips planned and outings so in some cases I will be using the scheduling feature on Youtube and on WordPress to cover for days where I can't manually post.

So this is my first video, enjoy! I hope you follow me along on this challenge. You just have to subscribe to my email list, or to my Youtube channel (why not both?), to stay on top of my latest video and blog post. Oh yeah, I got a fancy new intro for my videos, let me know if you like it.

I would love your feedback, you can leave it here as a comment or in the youtube video itself. If you want to find out more about the 100 Day Challenge, then visit this page.

The post 100 Day Challenge Begins Now appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

It tops or matches the famous white chocolate mocha because it's sweet but not overly so and still delivers a good jolt of caffeine to wake you up or give you a little boost. I've been ordering the white chocolate mocha with half of the designated amount of white chocolate syrup because it's just too much.

But the cascara latte is perfect. I'm not a huge fan of most lattes because they tend to be too sweet, but the cascara latte isn't. It's just sweet enough.

So why am I talking about Starbucks on a marketing blog anyway?

I like them most of the time. I'm a romantic and I want to like the small and quaint coffee shops in and around my city, I want to experience "better" coffee as many of my friends put it. But the reality is that most of my experiences with these small coffee shops are shit. They don't hold a candle to Starbucks. So I remain a Starbucks fan. They make my experience enjoyable, consistent, and reliable.

When trenta won't do. #starbucksforlife

A photo posted by Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) on Jan 8, 2017 at 9:26am PST

Then there's the business side of things.

I have been fascinated with Starbucks over the past year, not only because of their coffee but because of their marketing and promotional initiatives. They're a great company to study and learn from in regards to promotions, marketing, and sales.

As far as I can tell,  Starbucks killed it in business during 2016, and they show no sign of slowing down for 2017.

They're constantly adding new items to their menu. This cascara latte is a perfect example. They take their infrastructure and existing ingredients and remix them to create something new. --Something that more businesses should work on regularly-- In the case of the cascara latte, they created a new syrup using the coffee cherry. You can read a little more about that here.

They recently they also added the Nitro Cold brew coffee to their lineup to follow the trends of cold brewed coffee. Starbucks leverages technology like very few companies do.

They try to make coffee different, unique and arguably better, like with their clover coffee brewing system.

Starbucks leverages technology like very few companies do.

I get it, they have the cash to do it, but they didn't just get the cash overnight, Starbucks deliberately and consistently provides customers with value and an enjoyable experience. But here are some of the reasons why I think Starbucks is using technology right.

[bctt tweet="Starbucks deliberately and consistently provides customers with value and an enjoyable experience." username="notagrouch"]

They have a solid mobile app that delivers on its basic promise of letting you order online, it gives you time. But the app has also has increased their sales from 15 - 20%.  It is expected to take over 50% or more of their transactions in the near future. The growth is also largely attributed to their loyalty program.

As a side note, I know that I have been happy with the loyalty program so far, I have over 8 free drinks at my disposal. Over the holidays they kicked it up a notch by gamifying the holidays with their Starbucks for life game, which is a digital version of the McDonald's monopoly game they have been running for a while. And like most chance, monopoly-style games seems and feels a little bit rigged, but I digress.

They have a solid presence in social media, with a good following and engagement tactics on most major networks, like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Youtube, Twitter and even Linkedin. They even embrace Snapchat.

Over the course of 2014-2016, they deployed wireless charging systems to most of their stores, for the convenience of their customers. We are power hungry and we are wi-fi hungry! After a failed relationship with T-mobile, and AT&T, they seem to finally have found a partner with Google to run one of the best free "public" wifi spots I've used recently.

After a failed relationship with T-mobile, then AT&T, they seem to finally have found a partner with Google to run one of the best free "public" wi-fi spots I've used in recent times.

Their products are mostly consistent throughout their stores and their policies are usually uniform as well. Once in a while, they have a nasty manager or employee, as a recent visit to my local store revealed, but what large corporation doesn't have their bad apple here and there?

https://twitter.com/notagrouch/status/808003240063139840

But before I bore you to death, let me wrap this up.

Overall, Starbucks will continue to grow and will kick ass again this year. Every business owner and entrepreneur should be paying attention. They have so many lessons that we can extract as budding and established entrepreneurs that you could spend an entire year just studying them in depth to get a solid business and marketing education. All for the price of a few cascara lattes each week.

Update couple of days later...

A couple of days later after I published this blog post, I published this video on Youtube to compliment this post, check it out if you'd like and don't forget to subscribe to my Youtube channel for exclusive video-only content.

The post Starbucks will dominate 2017 and Cascara Latte Review appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The Integrated Marketing Forum last year was all about mobile marketing I learned a lot of stuff. The most interesting thing about it is that many of the presentations that came up during the event were exact in predicting trends and digital marketing activity going on today.

The geolocation and geofencing stuff were the most interesting topics for me at the time, and now we have Snapchat and other apps leveraging geolocation and geofencing heavily. Beacons are hot, and all this stuff is just in the nascent stages.

Obviously, mobile first was important in 2015 and it's even more important now with social media sites and search engines favoring mobile websites over non-mobile websites.

The Integrated Marketing Forum is a must-attend event for any marketer looking to find out about the cutting edge techniques and technologies.

The topic of this year's Integrated Marketing Forum is Digital First

Just like last year's mobile focused sessions, these years sessions promise to educate you and enlighten you in the digital marketing space. This year's topic is Digital First.

It doesn't matter where you live, you have to make an effort to attend. But especially if you're in Southern California, Orange County and even in Northern California and surrounding areas. Get to this event.

Who's going to be at The Integrated Marketing Forum?

Oh, you know small companies that you probably never heard of with names like: Dollar Shave Club, Samsung, Adestra, Southwest Airlines, Google.

The price of attendance is negligible when you consider the value you'll get and the stature of the speakers.

Who should attend?

The event is for and by heads of companies, marketing managers and anybody in charge of business development and sales. In addition to learning from some of the big players in the digital marketing space, there are many opportunities to network with other attendees to share and discuss ideas.

If you're a social media manager, if you're in charge of sales, marketing campaigns, if you're an executive in sales, leadership, marketing and even operations, I suggest you attend. Clearly if you are the owner of the company you should be there.

How do you attend?

Just head over to their website and register. If you want to save some money, use the code NOTAGROUCH when you check out and you'll save $15.00.

The post Integrated Marketing Forum 2016 Registration Is Open appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I've used this technique to get 1000s of followers. When I started using Rewst, I had just around 3000. I'm close to 8000 followers now and continue to grow.

I have to remind you that you have to be mindful of how you use Rewst, or any other Twitter growth tool. You MUST work on engaging with your followers and those that you follow. Without real engagement, the number of followers you have becomes nothing more than a vanity metric.

One of the things that is great about Rewst that I didn't mention in the video, and maybe I'll cover it in a future blogpost is their virtual assistant service. If you don't think you have the time to do what I showed you in the video, they have a service where a person will do the work for you.

The post How to get 1000s of Followers on Twitter appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I thought about posting this on my blog, but this is really for you guys. For my friends here, for business owners and entrepreneurs, for freelancers and solo agents and for any of you that aspire to change the world.

If you've never blogged, or hardly ever do, it might seem strange when someone invites you to blog for them.

Let me explain why someone might invite you.

When someone invites you to be a guest blogger in their blog. If they know what they're doing, they just want you to be a guest expert.

They'll take care of posting and formatting the blogpost. They probably will make sure it reads well.

"But I don't know ANYTHING about blogging," you say.

Trust me, they know how much *you* know about blogging... yet they invited you.

But why?

Because they want to help you and help themselves at the same time. If you write on someone else's blog you instantly become a respected figure to the the readers of that blog. #fact

And you save the blogger the time it takes him or her to fill the space and time your blogpost is going to fill on their website. Not to mention that the audience gets a fresh look and perspective and maybe even a brand new topic for a change.

This can be refreshing for you and stimulating for your audience.

Everybody wins

So consider next time a blogger invites you to guest post, if you just write and you let them take care of it you are basically opening up your doors for more business and exposure.

Whatever your business might be.

You are dropping seeds in fertile ground and these could grow to be beautiful and *FRUITFUL* trees in the weeks or months down the road.

The person asking you to write for them, that nutcase... He or she thinks your expertise needs to be heard. It doesn't matter if you think you're not an expert.

Trust me. #runwithit

Don't worry about the inconsequential, like how do I use a blog? Write it on an email and send it to them, they'll know what to do.

Or how do I post the blogpost to twitter once I'm done? - Don't worry about it, they'll know what to do. Instead, you just say yes and write.

If a blogger asks another blogger to guest post, they both know what's up. They know what each other has to do. This is not your case.

When a blogger asks you to write a blogpost for them, but you are not a blogger, don't worry about becoming a blogger. Just write about what you know. They'll take care of all the other things.

Too busy you say. No time you say, and other objections.

Consciously close Facebook for 30 minutes for three days in a row, and use that hour and half to write your article. You'll feel great when you are finished.

You are not too busy to promote yourself and you can and could find the time to do so. Don't tell me otherwise, and more importantly don't lie to yourself and deprive yourself from the opportunity.

Writing in a public forum like a blog can be life-changing for you, it can be life-changing for them, and for the people reading your article.

Oh and the last objection... "I can't write" my spelling and/or grammar is terrible. Guess what? Some of the biggest bloggers I know have the worst grammar in the world. Why?

Because it is inconsequential and easy to fix. But it is not easy to find a mind or heart like yours.

So next time someone asks you to write a little blogpost, I suggest you #doit.

#justsayin

The post When Someone Invites You To Guest Blog, But You’re Not a Blogger appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Here's an example of my social media links using my blog:

• http://notagrouch.com/facebook
• http://notagrouch.com/snapchat
• http://notagrouch.com/twitter
• http://notagrouch.com/instagram
• http://notagrouch.com/fitbit

Managing your links like this makes you look professional. As a side effect, this helps people learn about your website without you having to send them the link to it. Another benefit is that you never have to look up any link that you setup like this; the perfect example is my fitbit address. Who would remember that? But I don't have to remember it, I just type it and voila, it works!

Use Cases:

These are ideal when you want to send links to people via SMS, or Snapchat, or just in regular messenger conversations. These are great to put in your business card too, or a banner, or a brochure. It helps you brand yourself better and also lets you control the traffic.

If you ever want to change where that link goes, you can. Just edit the redirect and change it wherever you want it to go. Perfect if you get a new Twitter account, or a different Facebook page. Ok, here's the video:

You can use this for affiliate links, or social media profiles, or specific blogposts. This video shows you how you can create redirects using your WordPress blog, and a very popular plugin. The plugin is called Redirection and it's available here. There are a few other plugins you could use or if you are feeling adventurous, you could do this at the server level using Apache redirects, but we'll leave that for another tutorial.

Video: How To Create Custom Social Media Links Using Your Blog

This same method can be used to create links to anything you want, like a specific blogpost or an affiliate product. It's very similar to using a custom short link like bit.ly or j.mp or even your own like I described in another blogpost.

Ultimately, this is up to you to get creative and use it however you want. The custom social media links is the easiest and most common place use of this. How would you use this?

The post How To Create Custom Social Media Links With Your Blog appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I finally read Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you noticed, we started reading it for the book club about four weeks ago.

I've been recommending the book to clients and friends since it came out, but here's the dirty little secret. I had not read it. I only skimmed through it once or twice, but I inherently understood what the book was about.

And talk about throwing jabs all day long. Gary has put out so much valuable content and so clearly articulated the essence of this book throughout his talks before publishing it that I knew I could recommend this book even without reading it.

How many things would you feel comfortable recommending without actually trying or using yourself?

I trusted that my clients would like the book and get value from it and everyone would come back telling me how great it was. People are still talking about it now, check out the hashtag on Twitter: #JJJRH.

Time to buckle down

But now running the book club and helping more people, I thought it was time to read it and get the details. Especially because of Snapchat. I've been using Snapchat now quite a bit more than I ever did before and I wanted to see what Gary had to say about it in the book.

The spoiler on that is that he doesn't talk much about Snapchat. At the time of the writing of the book, Snapchat wasn't a big network, so it only gets a few pages towards the end. But the whole message of the book applies to Snapchat as it does to anything else.

He talks heavily about Facebook and Twitter, on Round 3 and on Round 4 respectively. Facebook is where you story-tell, and Twitter is where you follow the pulse, where you listen.

I think everyone in the book club also appreciated the choice because many of the members are completely new at social media, and even more so when it comes to using it for business.

The devil is in the details

The book is beautiful, literally. Its body is designed in a wide format and even today is only available on hardback edition. It is almost like a coffee table book and it has a fancy jacket with a prominent old school pair of boxing gloves embossed to represent the "oo" in Hook.

The pages are thick and of high quality semi-gloss paper. Like a high-end book. I was surprised about all this when I bought the book because Crush it and The Thank You Economy were just normal books in these regards. I was also surprised at the price: $32.39, until I really analyzed it and read it.

But the book itself is a metaphor of what Gary is talking about in it. How to tell a story in the chosen medium so that it stands out in the best possible way.

In this case, Gary is using a classic format (book) to tell us stories about social media networks, but he picked the best possible format to deliver that story. This is one of those books that stands out from the rest for several reasons.

It doesn't fit your bookshelf like the other books do. It doesn't blend into the background when you take it out and it isn't something you can read conspicuously. Every page is perfectly crafted.

Full color, solid typeface and smart formatting make this a book you want to keep even after you finish reading it. All these details reflect the message he talks about in every chapter, or rather in every round. Stand out, and do it well.

Mostly Evergreen Content and solid advice

With the exception of a few mentions and predictions of Google Glass and Google Plus, the content still stands up to scrutiny, almost 3 years after it was written.

In social media, that's like 20 years!

The core of the book focuses on what Gary has been doing and saying all along in all of his videos. Learn to speak the language your customers speak. It doesn't matter if your customer is on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, Snapchat, or the latest and greatest hip app. You have to speak natively or you'll die.

Breaking it down

The first two rounds setup the rest of the book by reinforcing core social media principles. Gary talks about how social media is mostly about micro content and content that gives much more than it asks. It entertains, and it works but only when it's native to the platform. This is how the major chapters in the book break down.

Facebook

Then the rest of the book is all about specific networks. The Facebook section is particularly important because Facebook is the biggest social network today. The most relevant, the one with the widest demographics and arguably the one that commands the most attention.

The section is good because it talks about all the nuances of Facebook, but it also showcases short 1 page critiques on various posts by brands. Gary praises or rips each one of them apart and helps you see things as you should, from your customer's point of view but never forgetting the benefit your activity will provide in the long term, if done right.

Twitter

The Twitter section is another sizable section of the book. I still use and love Twitter, despite growing criticism and concerns for its long term viability. I even wrote a guide on how to grow it.

Gary, in classic Gary style goes all in and tells you about using Twitter to listen to your customers. How to listen to trends and make personal connections that will transcend the life of the platform.

On Pinterest

Pinterest is very underutilized, but in round 5, Gary teaches you about "glaming it up on Pinterest." This is a place where you can build community and showcase your products in a very flattering light. Just don't forget to speak the native language.

Like in the Facebook section, there are critiques of good and bad use cases for Pinterest and one of the recurring themes here is to use the platform natively, like making sure your pins have a link to the correct location.

Instagram

The Instagram section is mostly case studies like those on the Facebook and Pinterest rounds. Overall this chapter is short but the basics are reinforced. Speak the language; use hashtags, use great photos, appeal to the younger crowd with visual story telling.

Tumblr

After Instagram, we have Tumblr. One of those huge yet obscure networks. At one point in the not so distant past, Tumblr was bigger than WordPress as a blogging platform. But that's the thing. Tumblr is a blog platform. So it is everything and nothing at the same time.

It's tough to build community and even tougher to use it right. Gary's tips here are to really, I mean, really, learn the language. Use animated gifs, recreate, borrow and uplift content and be careful with pushing your own stuff here.

And yes... I use all of these platforms and more. If you want to catch up with me on any of them, here you go: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Tumblr.

The Final Five Rounds are Meaty

In conclusion, you should get this book. You should read it, study it, apply it, and use it as a way to learn about what's coming. There are three sections to the book, the introduction & setup, the case studies and then the closing advice. The book is almost 3 years old now, but still relevant, even Gary thinks so.

STAY RELEVANT OR DIE | DailyVee 061https://t.co/nA44ZnoUkS pic.twitter.com/Ze4sHYfCDS

— Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) August 17, 2016

The last five chapters of the book are packed with logic, motivation and inspiration. Things that should help you feel inspired to go on and take on the world. It doesn't matter if you are just joining the social media revolution (but it does matter that you do it now!).

It doesn't matter because as you'll see, there are new things coming up all the time and in contrast with the old media formats like TV, Radio, Magazines and Newspapers, social media changes daily. This gives you an advantage to stay ahead of the curve by working your ass off, by paying attention to the trends and your consumers.

One thing that I found particularly interesting was the title and message for round 10. This is something I've been telling my clients for years, even before JJJRH. You are a media company, whether you like it or not. I don't care if you sell washers and screws, if you teach driving lessons, or do wardrobe shopping for celebrities.

You are a media company now and it's up to you to be a good one. And if you don't know what I mean by that then I recommend you go and pick up a copy of Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook.

If you already read it, what were the most salient points you took from it? How about your favorite quotes? Drop them in the comments and I'll include them in my next round up.

The post Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. – Review & Recap appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you read my blog on a regular basis, or you visit any of my social media channels, then you might have heard of them. But most of you haven't. Two comedians and one entrepreneur.

What do they have in common?

Bill Burr wasn't one of the best known comedians up to just a few years ago. The same thing goes for Louis C.K. Social media put them in the spotlight.

How did they become an "overnight success"?

They've been working small stages with 20 people, shitty stinky bars telling jokes to a small audience.

Gary's been doing videos, and tweets, and interviews with all kinds of audiences and dropping jabs for over 10 years now. He'll even be at Affiliate Summit East this weekend, kind of.

And now, some people think he rose out of nowhere, they think he's an overnight success. They don't know the effort he has put in. They don't know the value he's been delivering day in and day out, sometimes to an absent student.

Gary started Wine Library TV without anybody watching the first month. Ok, maybe a few people watched during that time. Admittedly, I didn't. I met him back in 2009 at an event put together by Bryan Elliot, an event about social media where he casually talked about his first book.

By the way, as a small aside, go watch the very first video he posted, Episode 1 of the Wine Library TV series. Pay attention to the quality of the video, the sound isn't that great, the best quality available is 240! I mention this because I so often emphasize to you that you should start your videos NOW. The content is important, but you don't have to have a totally professional setup to get started. No need to wait for that. Start!

Back in 2009, I bought his book, Crush it and that Christmas I bought 15 copies and gave them away to some of my friends. I told them that this book would change their life. Most of them, to this day, haven't read the book.

[bctt tweet="The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. -- Chinese Proverb" username="notagrouch"]

But they've now heard of Gary through social media, they've heard him at an event that they're familiar with, like a real estate event or SXSW. They saw him on Youtube, or some other place and think, "Where did this guy come from?," they think: "Who is this guy that gets 1000s of likes and comments on every piece of content he posts?

The question of how does someone become an overnight success makes me think about this video:

Yes, there is some element of "having the DNA" but you also have to hustle, you have to have talent, you have to have a thick skin, you have to have patience, and most of all, you have to work hard. Nothing happens overnight.

People won't understand you, people won't believe in you, they may even put you down. but your customer will if you treat them well. Develop your people skills, even if you don't have them now, you have to work on them.

Then I thought I would share this and put a nail in that coffin. There is no overnight success! 

If you only watch one video today, watch the one below

Go out there and get it done, don't whine, don't complain, hustle. Ask me any question I can help with, I want to help you.

The post Overnight Success appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

We're reading: Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, by Gary Vaynerchuk.

We selected this book during the last meetup for The Power of Habit. By all accounts, The Power of Habit was a fantastic first choice. I expect that our next choice will be as enlightening.

I have read Crush It! and The Thank You Economy, also by Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is on his 4th book now: #AskGaryVee, but we're starting with Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, his 3rd book because it is very relevant to our business. Most of the people involved in the Dot Com Lifestyle group have or want to have an online business.

We seek the kind of business that frees up our time and resources so we can do whatever we want. Social media has risen to be a very disruptive force in today's world. We've seen complete industries turned upside down because of Facebook, and Twitter. Instagram and Flickr changed the photography landscape forever.

We've seen regimes collapse under the pressure created by social media users. We have seen businesses explode because of a good Youtube commercial. This is why we want to read this book. How can we as entrepreneurs tap into the power of social media?

The title is descriptive of the philosophy that Gary preaches. Jab, Jab, Jab means to deliver the small but solid hits that pave the way for a knockout --the Right Hook-- punch in a fight. My buddy John Chow pointed out that it's a strange analogy to use when you're trying to build a business and generate sales.

Like do you want to "punch" your customer? He asked during our first meeting last week. And I can see that the principle could have been better illustrated with a more friendly analogy. But at the same time, in business we often say " go knock them out!" when talking about delivering a presentation, or business proposal.

Either way I'm really looking forward to reading this book. The questions that come to mind as of the writing of this book are:

• What exactly does Gary mean by Jab, Jab, Jab?
• When and how do you deliver the Right Hook?
• How do we translate our business goals, intentions and sincerity into social media activities?

The book Breakdown is as follows:

• Week 1 - Start the book. You should have read up to the "Kit Kat: Timed Out" section (page 75) before meeting for week #2.
• Week 2 -  Read up to Comedy Central: Bringing Community Together (page - 148), before meeting for week #3.
• Week 3 - Read from 149 to finish. before meeting for week #4
• Week 4 - Let's wrap up the book, commentary, lessons learned, questions pending and selecting the next book.

The post Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

How do you get people to subscribe to you, leave comments and like your videos. Maybe even share them out to their friends. This video focuses on establishing relationships with other youtubers.

This will help you increase youtube engagement. Just keep in mind that the method and tips described in this video are meant to be a medium to long term play.

Youtube is one of the most trafficked websites in the planet, and many people use it as a search engine to find tutorials, instructions, entertainment and all kinds of other content. I'm sure you've heard this before: Youtube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world.

So how can you leverage Youtube for your business or cause?

As far as Internet marketers, bloggers and social media professionals go, I feel that Youtube is underutilized. Not very many people are using it with successful results. I decided to make a short video to help out with some of the basics.

In addition to this video, I also recommend that you take a look at my 7 Power User Tips for Youtube. Soon I'll make new videos explaining other aspects of Youtube and how you can leverage it to make money, promote your brand or help get your message out.

If you have any suggestions for new videos or blogpsots, please leave me a comment with your idea.

Here is the video: Tips to Increase Youtube Engagement

If you have any questions, please leave them below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. I would also appreciate if you could rate this post using the stars at the end of the article, Thank you!

The post Tips To Increase Youtube Engagement appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

As we head out to the Dot Com Lunch event, something strange started happening with our faces. You'll have to watch to find out.

During this Dot Com Lunch, I get a chance to catch up with one of our members and see what he's been up to.

As a side note on this whole vlogging thing, I must say that it is a pretty tough challenge to make a daily vlog that is interesting. There's a few that I haven't gotten around to publish already so I feel as if it's really easy to fall behind.

Doing a daily vlog, or even a daily blog is a challenge of commitment and dedication. Hopefully I can hang onto it for the duration of the 90 day challenge. If I can do that, then I'll try to continue further and do 365.

One of the things I realized early on is that I need a lot more organization in order to produce a daily video with some sort of common thread. So I created an index to help me for now and to help you find the newest videos and those that you might have missed. You can find the vlog index here.

The post Vlog 11 – MSQRD Shenannighans at Dot Com Lunch appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I have been writing for a month but only have like four visits each day. I have so many articles but nobody reads them. How do I get people to read my posts?

So I decided to write some posts about that and hopefully it helps you out. This is the first in the series explaining How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog.

How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog - Part 1 - Let's talk about basics first

First let's debunk some myths

Back in 2006 I started teaching some businesses about blogging and this was the title of the first slide I would share with them:If you build it they will NOT come. This was true again in 2010, and even more true today.

Just because you built a blog and wrote in it, doesn't necessarily mean that people will come to visit it. There's a lot of content out there published everyday, why should they spend time on your content?

I wrote original content but Google doesn't like it. If you write original content and you have made your blog accessible to the search engines then they will index it. But indexing doesn't mean traffic.

Search engines love content that is indexable. But they may or may not send you traffic, that depends on other factors which I'll cover in another post.

Also, stop thinking about Google as the only search engine. There are others out there so think of your whole approach as search engine friendly instead of just Google friendly.

Nobody cares to read what I have to say. Sorry to break it to you, but as much as some people tell you that you're a unique snowflake in a snowstorm, you aren't when it comes to how you think and feel about the world, or in this case a specific topic.

With over 7 billion people in the planet, and over 1.6 of them online, other people will be interested in reading what you have to say. They just don't care much about you, so you have to make an effort to get your blogpost in front of them.

People want to read about my everyday life. Although blogs have a history of being a bit of a journal type of outlet, nobody really cares what you had for breakfast, what dream you had last night, or whether your cat meows or purrs when it's raining. Seriously, nobody GAF.

The exception to that last paragraph is if your blog is about food, the psychology of dreams, or pet psychology. But from a personal experience type of thing, most personal blogs will not ever get a lot of traffic, or make any money.

Most successful blogs aren't personal blogs. In order to make a successful personal blog where you talk about your personal daily experiences, you need to have a knack for witty writing and entertaining others. It's a tough gig and one that I don't recommend you start with.

Improve your SEO but don't overdo it

Spend time learning how SEO works and apply the techniques you learn to your blogposts. But don't overdo it.

The search engines look for hundreds of signals in order to give your website a score. If your articles are too full of keywords, or have too many links, or they are too perfect, this may hurt your site too.

The rule of thumb is to make sure you write for humans, but welcome the search engines. Good sources to read about SEO include: MOZ, Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal. Also the keep the official Google Webmaster's blog in your bookmarks and read it periodically.

Write good content and try to make it evergreen

A key to getting traffic to your blog is to have articles that are worth reading. They don't have to appeal to everyone but make sure they are well written. They don't have to be perfect, but at least check your spelling before hitting publish.

Try your best to write it in a way that is entertaining or informational. Avoid ranting, or rambling. And make your best effort to make sure your articles are relevant for a long time to come.

This is what we call evergreen content. Content that is good today, and it will be good tomorrow and in a month and even a year. But getting to the core of this post, following are my best tips for you.

My #1 rule of thumb to get more traffic to the blog

I will cover other topics in upcoming blogposts, but first I want you to think about this and let it sink in. I don't want what I'm about to tell you to scare you from blogging, but to encourage you and explain what you've been missing all along.

The key to getting traffic to your blog is promotion. You have to write your blogposts and then work on promoting them.

Unless you have thousands of dollars to pay someone to do this for you, you need to put in the work to distribute your blogposts.

At first, it will seem like it is a lot of work and you may even feel like blogging is not a worthy endeavor.

I hope you don't quit and realize that with practice, you'll be able to do the promotional work very easily with minimal effort.

For every hour of writing, spend five to eight hours promoting it

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

-- Thomas Edison

Most people scoff at this and think I'm crazy. But that's what I've found to be a good amount of promotion for a blogpost, give or take.

The shock usually wears off when I explain that you don't have to promote the blogpost for 8 hours straight. That wouldn't work actually.

What you have to do is publish your post on your blog, and then promote it for 5 to 10 minutes at a time for the next few months. A little bit at a time, on different places. This builds a good backlink profile and it's gradual which the search engines love.

The bulk of the promotion work happens in the hour or two following your publishing time and in the upcoming days.

Where should you promote your blogposts?

This is the tricky part and where you'll spend those five hours or so. At first, you have to cover all the basics when you publish your post.

The basics include social media and email. More advanced places to get traffic to your blog include: word of mouth, bookmarking sites and forums.

Email the blogpost to your readers

Share your blogpost via email. You should have an email list setup where you have people that want to hear from you. An easy way to set that up is with Aweber, you can set it up for free for a month.

DO NOT use the built in WordPress.com or Jetpack subscription plugin for this. I'll explain why in an upcoming blogpost; you need a proper email list.

Post in social networks

One of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is to use the major social networks. Share the post in Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+ and Pinterest. The easiest way to do this is to install something like the Floating Social Bar plugin and go through each of the buttons on your own article after publishing it.

On Facebook, you should also go into relevant groups you belong to and share it there. If you have any Facebook pages that are relevant then share your article there as well. In groups, make sure you follow the etiquette set forth by the group admins or else you may get banned.

On Twitter, you can do a search using http://search.twitter.com/ and see who is asking about what you wrote or talking about it and see if you can politely introduce them to your new article.

On Google+, share it to your timeline and also look for groups you should be a part of and share it there. But read about my warning with social media sites below.

Linkedin is another site where you can share your articles. This one is tricky because people consider it a "professional" network where only "work stuff" should be shared but I don't agree with that. Use at your own discretion.

On Pinterest, make sure you have some boards that meet the criteria of your different topics so you can share each blogpost to the right area. Boards should be simple like "food" "travel" "photography" etcetera.

Warning about posting to social media sites

A warning about social media sites. Most people in social media who aren't bloggers or marketers may find your attempts to share your blogposts with them spammy or annoying.

This is particularly true with admins of groups, they often feel like they have to police their group a lot because people try to spam it all day long. Don't be a spammer.

Make sure you build a good rapport in each group, and make sure that the blogpost you're about to share actually gives some value to the readers, if it doesn't then skip that group for that post.

Another mistake with social media sites is sharing only your content. Post other people's content too, interesting articles and stuff like that. You have to make an effort to be social too, interact with other people's posts by liking, comment and sharing their articles.

I feel like this is a good start to get you an overview of the things that need to happen for your blog to grow. Ultimately, your goal with any blog is to get more traffic. Traffic equals eyeballs, which means whether you want to make money, or spread your ideas, you need more of it.

Key takeaways to get more traffic to your blog:

• Don't believe in the myths of blogging.
• Dot your i's and cross your t's when it comes to SEO, but write for humans.
• Share your content via email.
• Share your content in social networks. If you build it, you need to tell people about it so they come.
• Learn the nuances of each social network so you have better results when sharing.

The post How Do You Get Traffic To Your Blog – Part 1 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Minds is an open source encrypted social network with the ability for you to monetize your content. It's not like anything that is already out there.

For example Tsu tries to pay you a share of the money made with advertisements shown on your content; but nobody is really making money with it and it has become a spam and junk center. I dont think it will survive much longer.

So this is not Tsu, and it's not Facebook, but it has some gamification incentives and a way for you to make money with your content on a P2P basis.

In Minds, I can pay for boosted posts and you can also make deals with individuals to help promote content. You set your price, you call the shots.

Let me give you a quick getting started guide with Minds.com

Please keep in mind, that the site is still in beta so a few things may seem clunky, but it's very promising.

Sign up for an account

You sign up by visiting Minds.com, you don't need to provide any personal information beyond a username of your choice, and your email address. You can also do all this through their mobile app (Android, IOS)

My username is Oscar Gonzalez, feel free to follow me, or as it is called here, subscribe to me.

Customize your profile

The first screen you'll see is your profile and you can edit it by clicking on the pencil icon. You can always get back to this spot by using your profile icon on the top right corner.

You can customize your header banner, your avatar and bio from this page. It's a really elegant interface. The date picker to select your birthday is a little odd, but it's simple enough.

This is what I came up with on the first try, it feels a little similar to Facebook but the whole thing is a lot simpler and cleaner. I really like it.

Getting acquainted with the user interface

The top right corner has a small navigation menu with some neat features. Because the network is fully open sourced, you can actually submit a bug here and it will get looked at. If you are feeling adventurous you can also submit a feature request.

There is also an area where you can review your stats on your boosted content. Unlike Facebook, you can promote your regular posts on your profile so they get more visibility.

The small bell represents any alerts that are new since you checked lasta.

The last icon before your profile, gives you access to your wallet screen. In order for you to boost your content, you need to have credits and this is where your credits show up.

Your avatar button takes you to your profile where you can edit your profile picture, banner picture and bio.

Lastly, the three dots next to your profile open up a few more options. You can logout, adjust your global settings for the site or switch to the old interface.

This is a refreshing experience

The user experience is clean and even though the network is still in Beta, it feels solid. The user interface is clean and elegant and everything is simplified compared to Facebook or Twitter.

When you visit your alerts, you can see everything that has happened recently and you can take action from there.

The first few alerts help you get started with finding new content to explore. And as people find you, you'll be notified here when someone subscribes to you.

There is a gamification element too

This has been the downfall for many networks that have tried it but I think Minds.com has the right idea and execution. Certain actions give you credits which you can then spend to promote your content.

As you join, you'll get about 110 points or so to start. 100 for joining, then you'll get 10 points everyday for a "daily login" and you get one point for voting on someone else's post.

One thing I noticed is that they seem to be breaking the secret rules of social networks. That action which takes the most effort or commitment is, or should be the most valuable. For example, a comment is more valuable than a like, and a share should be more valuable than both comments and likes.

Case in point, if you like someone else's post, you'll get a point. But you will not get a point if you leave a comment, you should get more than one point because this is arguably a more valuable action. It represents more engagement.

After your profile is done, you can start using the site. Here's a quick rundown of what's available.

The action menu

The site features an icon-only action menu on the left hand side and if you're new to the site, the icons may not be intuitive enough for you to just figure it out. Here's a breakdown of what you can find there.

Some of the sections highlighted above have a few sub-menu actions. For example, the blog section lets you view featured blogposts, search for blogposts and create your own.

The blogging section is pretty standard and it has a WYSIWYG interface that works fine. Here is the first blogpost I created with it.

The most compelling features of the site

Social networks come and go, but the need for privacy is increasing and this may just be the best attempt at helping us with that. Minds.com is addressing this in two ways, the chats and the network are encrypted so people can't sniff what you're doing on the site.

The other way to help with privacy is to make the software open source. Developers can read through the code and figure out how things work, there is no hidden algorithm and "secret sauce."

The guys from Diaspora tried this before, but unfortunately a few years later the project is almost dead because it was too disjointed, Minds.com addresses this issue by offering a central location to interact with your connections.

Monetization is important for me and for other people that use social media sites for networking and business, and I really like the model offered by Minds. I acquired about 3000 credits and I will be putting the promoted and boost features to the test over the next week or so. I'll let you know how that goes.

For now, why don't you give it a try. Come join me, explore this new network.

The post Minds The New Social Network appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I thought it was a great way to educate the marketing community. More people should attend next time and that will be the 5th event.

Anaheim was host to this hidden gem of marketing conferences. I had a chance to attend the 2015 Integrated Marketing Forum (#2015IMF). The theme of the conference was The Mobile Tipping Point.

I didn't know what to expect. I have heard titles like that for over a decade or more. Seriously, ever since my first Blackberry 950 in 1999, I've heard the same thing. If it's not "We're at the cusp of the mobile revolution..." then it is "mobile is now!..."

But this time I believe it, and I think most tech people and even regular folk would agree.

The Mobile Tipping Point is Now

There are more major mobile events happening now than ever before. Earlier this year, Google penalized websites that were not mobile friendly. People dubbed that Mobilegeddon.

We now have truly smart watches and other smart devices. Smart glasses. Computing power is getting significantly smaller and cheaper each quarter. Even our appliances are becoming smarter. Mobile is small and portable, and with the Internet of Things (IoT), things are only going to get smaller.

I believe more mobile devices are sold than any other computing device, so more than laptops, desktops and servers. We have them in all shapes, and sizes, multipurpose or specific. And mobile is cheap! I have an app on my phone that can do almost anything that Photoshop can do to enhance and modify a photo, and it's good! It does 90% of what I need to do to photos.

I can do that in my "phone" now, I don't need a desktop computer and a license for Photoshop. Now, I will most likely get the whole thing again when time is due, new computer and the full Adobe Creative Suite, but for someone without resources, in an underdeveloped country for example, they now have new opportunities if they just have a mobile device.

Then you add this guy creating high-end phones for the "underdeveloped" markets, and you have a new 1.5 to 2 billion people accessing new information and opportunities that will change their lives. For the first time.

Those are opportunities that you and I have had for 20 years. Millions, no billions of people are about to have their own internet revolution. Do. You. Understand. What. That. Means?

And if you didn't get the  message yet, they're not going to be accessing the internet on a desktop computer.

During the conference, I learned from Stance, a sock company if you can believe it. I learned they grew from 0 to huge cashflow all on mobile. Even their photo shoots were shot on their phones. They were on startup mode and on a budget, but the phone quality was good enough. Their audience grew from Instagram, so they stay in touch with their fan base that way.

Brett Sirianni from Stance even mentioned during the presentation, that the photos need to look like the photos the audience produce. Natural photos show that "they are one of them" and thus taking photos with their mobile devices was a perfect fit. Now that they have exploded and are growing like crazy, they can spend some money on more sophisticated marketing and nicer equipment but their philosophy is always mobile first.

And they don't think they actually need it but they like to try new things. For example, one of their case studies showed that Reddit drove tons of traffic but turned an almost 0% conversion.

Compare that to a 5 - 8% conversion from Instagram, where you can't even use links! That presentation, while a little bit clumsy, was very enlightening. I mean seriously, fame and fortune, because of fun, goofy socks? Via Instagram? Who would have thought?

My reaction when I first heard about how @stance made their fortune. #unexpected #2015IMF pic.twitter.com/8UYlZkDxIE — Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) November 17, 2015

You can record a TV show entirely on iPhones and iPads. Not that you would, but you can. Before, you needed at least $10,000 in equipment. go back another 10 years and that would be $50,000 worth of equipment. So yeah, The mobile tipping point is here. Remember the Google's Zero Moment of Truth book? Google was ahead of the rest of us because they have access to the most data. They can see where the needle points to with a very high degree of accuracy. And they're smart to mine and analyze that. But now most websites, at least most of my websites and my client's websites receive over 51% mobile traffic. Some as high as 83%.

There is a whole new world of possibilities with location based and mobile marketing.

Can you imagine if you were running a large event, say with 20,000 people in attendance. Maybe a concert, or sports game. Now imagine the value of knowing exactly where and when the attendees go somewhere, how much time they spend at the beer stand, how much time they spend at their seats, and any where else you want to monitor. As they walk by a certain pathway, you could send them a notification about a deal going on just 20 ft away. Food, maybe more beer, maybe something unique for the VIP attendees, like a scavenger hunt or a picture opportunity. Would the analysis of that traffic, and the insights on user behaviro give you a good insight into how to improve your branding, marketing and offers? (your answer should be a loud YES!) What if you could tie information about the person using Facebook profile info and make their experience, shall we say AMAZING? If you knew that some of your attendees are vegetarian, you could direct them (via the app on the phone) to the food stands that offer vegetarian options and even a menu to browse as they walk up.

#2015IMF Live heatmap replay of an event that used ibeacons and proximity messaging. This shows where the crowd was, when and allows the company to laser target messaging, offers and more. A video posted by Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) on Nov 12, 2015 at 2:41pm PST

Your attendees are pumped, they are excited, maybe a little tipsy and you come in to make their day better by offering them tickets to the next show two weeks away at just the right price if they buy it now or within a day or two.

That's something else I learned about at the conference, the power we have with technologies like geofencing and proximity sensors is accessible to most budgets.

With strategically placed sensors throughout your venue, you can see foot traffic reports like the one in the Instagram above. If you add an app to the mix where the attendee would install it in advance then you can make those ideas I just mentioned a reality.

No need to imagine this type of technology and access anymore. As the brilliant ladies from AXS (AEG Live) showed us, this is now.

And The Takeaways?

• Mobile is now.
• Invest in mobile.
• With Websites, responsive is a must, but it's just the beginning.
• Small budgets or large budget, you need mobile.
• Test new things, experience and bring in the other departments.

I can't wait to go back to IMF in 2016. The stuff I learned was great and I look forward to see more of that.

The crowd was awesome too

I met several interesting people and the crowd was all over the place in terms of industries. from traveling, to real estate, to construction and assisted living.

The age of the people attending varied across the board as well.

These two things tell me that everybody needs marketing, everybody is a marketer, and also that we are all learning from each other.

As the title implies, this conference isn't about internet marketing, or social media, or pay per click, or blogging, or content. But it's about all of the different marketing channels, methods, strategies and execution coming together to achieve outstanding results.

It is my opinion that only this type of marketing yields consistent results. Keep the marketing venues mixed, keep experimenting but make sure the pieces work together.

The speakers talked about social & print, print and TV, TV and mobile, TV and social, geofencing, proximity sensors, proximity messaging.

Here is a recap of the social media activities during the event, I made it on Storify.

Integrated Marketing Forum 2015 - Social Media Recap

The Unexpected Happened

Two things were unexpected at the event and took it one notch higher. The night before the event I realized my buddy from Zeek Interactive was going to be on a panel. I knew the panel at least would be fun. If you want to see who was in the panel, take a look at the social media recap above and scroll to the bottom.

The other cool thing was that we were live witness and participants in a shark-tank like event. We had three entrepreneurs pitching their business to three investors. That was fun.

To select a winner, we all voted each time one of the investors asked a question. That kept things interesting for a while.

The post Rhythm Agency’s Integrated Marketing Forum 2015 appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

In this episode I talk about blogging for business. Some tips, and what's the difference between a blogpost and a product listing. Also, why most businesses fail at blogging.

I talk about TV, radio and the internet and how advertising has evolved and how you need to adapt to it in today's social media world.

Blogging helps with your business if you do it properly.

A blog can be a reason for someone to visit your website and give you some mindshare. It's really good to use a blogpost to tell a story but not great to sell a product.

If you need a blog started, then I recommend you take a look at this guide on how to start a blog all by yourself, in about 30 minutes.

The post Driving with Oscar – Episode 4 – Blogging for Business appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Seriously Strange is produced in a weekly basis and new videos are released on Wednesdays. Topics range widely but mostly focus in the bizarre, occult or right down disturbing. If this is your cup of tea or you want to add a little variety to your life then I think you should check it out.

It's dark, but fun and entertaining. By entertaining I mean that some of the videos will keep you up at night. Seriously, nightmares are made of this.

Some of my favorite videos from Seriously Strange are below. They range from a few minutes to about 10 minutes so they're easy to watch.

I'm not alone in liking this channel...

Addicted to the #seriouslystrange series its so interesting

— Paul (@PaulKirkpatr1ck) April 28, 2015

Decided it was a good idea to scare myself silly by catching up on #SeriouslyStrange by @TheRobDyke. I may never sleep again...

— Starfish (@wicked_roses) April 27, 2015

And if you're a marketing type (like me) trying to crack the nut of building an audience, building a community and getting a huge level of engagement then follow the old tried and true method, like Rob does; create amazing content. You too can get raving fans like this:

Catching up on #SeriouslyStrange.
Can't believe I let myself get so behind in the midst of musical rehearsals.
Sorry, @TheRobDyke

— Olivia (@oliviarsarver) April 26, 2015

With over 1.2 million subscribers, I'm sure you'll find many videos entertaining. I like this channel because the videos have a high production value and the content is often new and unique. Rob sometimes calls on the audience to give him ideas to feed this creepy video feed. You can get in touch with Rob on Twitter @TheRobDyke.

Pranks are all the rage in Youtube, but what happens when a prank goes horribly wrong? Here's a compilation of some of the pranks that went horribly wrong. Pranks that Went Horribly Wrong #SeriouslyStrange

There are many things we can't explain in life. But disease is something that is terrifying when  you can't tell what is causing it, what it is and whether you will survive it. This is Unexplainable Diseases #SeriouslyStrange

Then there is the hunger that some of us have for the mysterious. In this case Rob finds the most Terrifying Unsolved Mysteries, and nails it, again.

Rob has a great looking site at Rob Mob, and you can find him on Twitter: @TheRobDyke.

The post Youtube Gold. Rob Dyke and Seriously Strange appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

You should try to make it tone of the events. I know it's tough to get up and be there by 9am on Saturdays, but if you are involved in social media, or digital marketing or if you want to become involved with this, then you must attend this meeting.

The post SMMOC Whiteboard Notes appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

SEJSummit is a conference featuring some of the top experts in enterprise level SEO. Hosted by Searchmetrics and organized by SEJ, this conference was extremely valuable in terms of networking and learning. The thing that makes it different than other similar industry events is that it is geared towards enterprise level SEO.

Big numbers, big traffic, multinational companies, multi-platform online presence management and things that are generally out of the reach of most SEOs. When it comes to analyzing data, big is awesome.

Usually enterprise level SEO means lots, and lots, and lots of traffic and really fun budgets. You get to try things and test things and you get results quickly. You can run A/B tests like Neil Patel suggests and get almost instant results.

By the way, Neil was one of the speakers. If you are a digital marketer of any kind, you should know who Neil Patel is. Another notable name was Jordan Koene. The presentations by Neil and Jordan were probably the most insightful and useful out of the event, but the other speakers were great too.

Mindy Weinstein taught us about making stories relevant and personal when you need to write content for "boring" industries. What I really liked about her talk is that she taught us how to do it at the same time she presented. She used a personal story to draw us in to her presentation and it worked beautifully.

I went to the Santa Monica event because it is close to me, but the SEJSummit is coming to Dallas, San Francisco and even London to name a few of the upcoming locations, visit the official invite page (click on the image above).

Sometimes when you go to an industry event like this one, you'll find yourself overwhelmed with information. You feel like you just put your mouth to a firehose and if you take in one more drop you will explode. This feeling generally leads to analysis paralysis and you end up going home with nothing but a spaghetti of new ideas; pages and pages of notes about cutting edge tricks and tips and possibilities that never materialize.

Not at SEJSummit, the format was terrific. One track was all that was needed. Speakers come up quickly without a whole lot of hoopla in between. The key element that makes this a must-attend event for 2015 is the focus on delivering three takeaways.

We have limited time; we need deep knowledge but also actionable steps. This is why the summit was outstanding.

See all the photos here.

Each speaker is required to present their talk in a 20 minute time slot (strict) and they open up by explaining what they will share with us and at the end there are 3 takeaways.  The three takeaways are easy to remember and note down, and then, expand when you get back to the office and really put things to action.

SEJ made sure that these three takeaways are actionable, impactful and memorable. Each speaker did a great job and kept the audience engaged. I wasn't the only one that felt this way because the room stayed full until the very last presentation.

If you want to learn about SEO from an enteprise point of view, you should make your way to one of the SEJSummit events. It doesn't matter if you are in-house SEO for a large company or an Agency managing enterprise clients, you have to make it to one of these. Oh yeah, and did I mention the event is free? What?

The post SEJSummit 2015 at Santa Monica by Searchmetrics and SEJ appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

So I was glad to see this pop-up the other day when I logged into my account. At least it seems like they're trying to keep our information safe.

The paranoid in me tells me that this is just a way to make us feel like they're doing something but really maintaining the status quo.

It reads:

Hi Oscar -- Sorry to interrupt. You haven't changed who can see your posts lately, so we just wanted to make sure you're sharing this post with the right audience. (Your current setting is Public, though you can change this hwneever you post.) Learn more

Then it asks who do you want to share this post with?

The post This Made me Feel Better about Facebook appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

There's just so much in there. And now, Foursquare comes up with this neat thing, Foursquare Timemachine.

And it brings back memories of good Foursquare fun, and badges and the dreams of getting rewards for your loyalty to your favorite spots. So I'm thinking I may keep using Foursquare for a while, although I haven't checked in anywhere for a while.

But anyway, this is what made me think about sticking around for a while. I love big data and I love what foursquare has done with our own personal stats to create this. This is useful, this is cool, this reminds me of using social media apps for fun not just business.

The post Foursquare Time machine appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The post Patience is Grossly Underestimated appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I found a few things to comment on about and share with you.

Here's my WordPress report as done by Jetpack. Mind you this is missing about 6 months of data since I didn't have Jetpack installed the whole year.

Notagrouch.com in 2013 - by WordPress.com (jetpack) This is a cool active display of some intersting statistics about my website according to Jetpack, they're pretty cool and you can get your own too.

I found that personally I stopped checking in to places as much. Not so much for privacy reasons, but it just seems like nobody cares about check-ins anymore. And maybe it is just that we are over it here in the States. Look, globally, we only have one location in the top 20 checked in  locations in Facebook. Is it just because we're outnumbered?

I'll still check-in occasionally to Foursquare or Yelp, but it is very rare. 2014, I will get back into it, there are always fans that stick around and maybe it's a little bit more organized now that initial wave of excitement is over and it's more mainstream. I hear a lot of changes coming for location based "stuff".

Also finally on Highlight, it took them a while to get it for Android so I had almost forgotten about. So far though I'm only finding stale data from people that got it and used it but quit using it. Most of their data is 10 months+ old.

On Twitter, here's my "Year in Review by Vizify" -- Mostly unedited, I just added a few more pictures & tweets to the standard one they're making right now. You can find them at Vizivy.com. or you can just watch the video:

Here are the highlighted points in the video:

• The launch of Real Free Website
• Dinner for my wife's Birthday
• Image for my Evernote tutorial
• I tweet about #OrangeCounty because I feature my favorite twitter people from #OrangeCounty
• #30DBC is a tag used for my Blogging group in Facebook. But we haven't used  it much recently. I will bring it back!
• #WordPress of course, because it is awesome
• Yup, I tweet almost 24x7 I do sleep occasionally, Seems like 2am-ish is when I tweet the most when late.
• Vine of my awesome daughter @WaterClaire at about 5 months old
• Turns out I'm an introvert... and I knew that somehow because breaking out of my shell into a social outgoing person you meet at events has been a struggle for me. More here at 23 Signs You're Secretly An Introvert.
• At the Pageant of the Monsters, thanks to @TedNguyenUSA!
• 13 Stories that Made Your Day and Broke The Internet.
• With my Wife hanging out and I'm wearing my #FLFOC t-shirt
• A tweet about podcasting. Basically don't sweat it, Get WordPress, add a couple of plugins, record your podcast, done!
• Another shot with my daughter.
• My Top 3 Followers... this reflects the past few months only. @MadHungryWoman, @JohnChow & @LivinLime - Thank  you guys!
• And my top "Golden" tweet, a tweet about Video Genesis, a product I promoted and made me a whole whopping $0!

In general all my numbers (raw numbers) grew significantly. Also my business grew to new levels and continues to grow. This is the focus for 2014. Thanks for hanging out, don't forget to subscribe or follow!

The post 2013 In Review for me appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

This is the team that decides not only which type of sites you see in the results, but some people may think that this team is more in charge of the sites you don't see in the results. The ones that get blacklisted or de-ranked, the ones that disappear from the Almighty Google Index.

Matt Cutts. Love him or hate him, that's up to you. The web, or at least the people that care about their website being found online seems to be at polar opposites in this matter. I think the majority of people in the business don't like him very much.

Personally I don't dislike the guy and I don't particularly like him either; that is not to say that I dislike him. He seems like a nice enough guy. He reminds me of a long-ago boss I had. He speaks with a very methodical tone, he is a diplomat. He is here to tell you how stuff is happening, without really telling you how stuff is happening.

Your job is to read between the lines. Pay attention to what he says as much as how he says it. If you are even remotely serious about developing your website to make you money, you need to watch every single video Matt Cutt puts out. Here's one of the recommended videos by Matt Cutts.

How WordPress and SEO work together for better Search Engine Results.

Forget the notion or idea or rumor that he is hated by the entire SEO community. What's important here is that this guy is the liaison between you and Google. He is the guy that tells you what is good and acceptable and what is not. When you hear about "Panda" and "Penguin" or "Hummingbird", these are the versions of the current algorithm of Google's search engine. Matt's in charge of this.

As far as I'm concerned, the information he provides is really good. So you should stay on top of his video posts. You'll find them in a couple places:

• Matt Cutts - Blog
• Google Webmaster videos - Youtube

So there you have it, I introduce you to Matt Cutts. Subscribe to the Google Webmaster videos linked above and pay attention to the videos he shares. They are golden nuggets of information. You could even use them to review your next SEO company if you want to outsource your online marketing or SEO.

You could get acquainted with the top viewed videos and learn about SEO, you could get the basics down in about 2 hours of videos. Then ask the agency or person you're interviewing the same questions you saw Matt Cutts answer. They should be very similar if you want to have someone help your business and do it in a way that will survive the next Google update.

The post Matt Cutts, The One SEO Guy You Must Know appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

If you go to statigram, you can visit the promote tab and allow it to create a Facebook cover photo based on your latest instagram photos.

It's a pretty cool little feature that Statigram offers, and just like the app itself, it is free. Every month or so I switch out my cover on Facebook and I use one of the covers created using Statigram.

This is my latest one:

The one thing I did was change the branding from statigram to my own website, the part that says "notagrouch.com" But the rest of it was all done automatically for me and it takes just a few seconds to create.

The post Get a slick Facebook cover photo from your instagram photos appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

I was invited to the event by Rochelle Veturis and she was one of the organizers along with Ted Nguyen and their entire team of social superstars. The event was terrific, with a hosted bar and top notch food. I've been to a couple events now hosted by Ted and Rochelle and they are always outstanding.

As amazing as the event was, it did not detract from the main focus which was to highlight Los Olivos. Turns out, Los Olivos is the largest apartment development complex by the Irvine Company with planned development for 1750 apartments!

Los Olivos is located next to the Verizon Amphitheater next to the 405 Freeway and just a few minutes away from the Irvine Spectrum, making it's location central and ideal to Irvine residents. It is close to one of the largest office centers and shopping centers in the city.

The new development is pet friendly, full of amenities and it even has electrical outlets for electric vehicles designed into the plans. It's a state of the art living complex. If I didn't already have a house in this beautiful city, or if I were looking to rent, I would totally consider living there.

I kinda wanna live here at Los Olivos. It's so refreshing, and how close it is to the Spectrum. #LosOlivosTweetup

— Oscar Gonzalez (@notagrouch) May 2, 2013

I could try to tell you all about the features and amenities of this great new community, but they do it better, check out all that Los Olivos has to offer.

• 8 community parks, including a 3-acre great lawn at the center of Los Olivos
• 6 salt water pools w/ spas
• Eating/entertainment area with dining area, fireplace & BBQs
• Cardio theater fitness center with cardiovascular and strength training equipment
• Meditation & movement studio including spin & indoor/outdoor yoga classes
• Wi-Fi connectivity in common areas
• Electric car outlets available*
• Onsite Village Market and Dry Cleaning Service
• 4 Clubrooms, a wine cellar-themed room, a sports-themed room & gourmet demonstration kitchen with indoor and outdoor seating
• Full-time activities director & a variety of planned resident events
• A direct walkway to the 1.2 million-square-foot Irvine Spectrum Center and world-class restaurants, shops, and entertainment.
• The San Diego Creek trail runs along Los Olivos and offers 12 miles of continuous pathway from Irvine to Upper Newport Bay
• Walking distance to Verizon Wireless Amphitheater
• Easy ishuttle access to more than 3,500 workplaces employing over 80,000 people

Besides learning about the great new community being developed, I got a chance to hang out with many of my social media friends. We got a chance to catch up with each other over drinks and food. The drinks were either wine or beer and the food was provided by Paul Martins. The food was excellent and anytime there's free beer it's alright in my book!

Check out the pictures.

[nggallery id=31 images=99]

The post Los Olivos Aparments Village appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

The next step was easier than I thought, I just had to delete dead pages or pages that never took off. A few weeks back I tried to just do it but I missed the option where I could do this and just kept putting it off. But it is actually super simple to delete a Facebook page.

Do it with caution. In coupled cases Facebook asked me for my password to confirm I wanted to delete that page; other cases the page was simply deleted it once I clicked on the confirmation button.

The post How to delete a Facebook Page appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.

Introduction to the site

When you first visit the website, you are immediately presented with a great slideshow of the results of Moving Mountains Design's work. It takes just about 30 seconds to get a great idea of the type of work you can expect from Michelle and her team. The pictures draw you in and set the expectations high!

Effective Site Design

The website is nicely built and the colors and design are appealing but simple enough to keep the focus on the value proposition. Selling your home faster and for more money. After all, that is why you would stage a home. So that you can sell it for the most money and as fast as possible.

If you don't think staging a home works, take a trip to a new housing development and take a tour of the model homes. I would find it hard to believe if the interior decorations don't make you want to buy the home. After that, try to take a tour of a finished un-staged home, you'll notice the difference.

The site is well targeted

Los Angeles and Southern California are very competitive and desirable real estate markets, so making sure your home is staged and ready to attract the highest bid is important. That's something I noticed from the home page at Moving Mountains Design. This is clearly stated above the fold. They take care of preparing and staging your house to sell. Everyone knows Los Angeles, but the site also explains that they focus on specific cities like San Marino, Sherman Oaks, Pasadena and surrounding areas. All of these areas are hot real estate markets so it's nice to know that you can find a trustworthy and reliable home stager for these areas.

But you could just hire any interior decorator right? I guess you could but I believe you'll have better chances of selling your house if you hire professionals that know the area well instead of just being general interior decorators. They'll be able to match the work to the culture and local trends; it's definitely a plus to hire someone that knows the local market!

Functionally the site is pretty great

The website itself is speedy and functional and provides tons of information about the industry and also showcases the lastest work performed in the blog. The services are clearly listed and easy to find. I found that the blog section could use a few changes. At least in my opinion. I prefer when a blogpost has a date and also an author, I think it gives it more credibility. I'm also turned off by large watermarks in what would otherwise be some terrific photography.

A good feature on the site, and one that I would use if I were looking for a company to stage my house is the estimate request. They have a form that allows you to give some very detailed information about your home so that Michelle and her team can get back to you with an accurate estimate. I prefer this approach instead of the usual "call for quote" method because I know that is just going to take forever and I won't get a clear answer.

With the form they have on there I can submit my information and be on my way while they prepare an estimate. The information I can provide is pretty detailed, things like square footage, number of rooms, whether the home will be vacant or not during the selling process, and other pertinent info. This is a plus for me. Unfortunately at the time of testing, the form seems to be broken. The number of bedrooms input field seems to be broken. Hopefully it will be fixed soon, this little glitch prevented me from testing the entire form submission process and makes me wonder if Michelle has lost any business due to this tiny mistake. update: I let Michelle know about the problem and she fixed it!

The site is social, but needs a little work.

This is one of the first sites in real estate where I see social media connections and I think that is great. I also know Michelle on Facebook and I know she uses Facebook and Twitter effectively to showcase her work and talk about her current projects and satisfied customers. There's a few little quirks that I would change if it were my site, but maybe that's just because I'm picky like that. One would be the social media share bar on the left hand side. I tend to dislike those because they float and follow you around on the page and also tend to block out text if your browser window is smaller than these sidebars are designed for.

The Facebook widget that shows you how many people like your page seems to be broken as it displays "Invalid App ID". This isn't too bad, but it should be fixed soon because social proof is important and the more people that like a page on Facebook, the more chances a visitor will find one of their friends in that list of likes, and this builds a little more trust.

Besides this issue, it is nice to have links to Twitter and Youtube, and also to Michelle's Facebook page; but unfortunately the link to Linkedin is broken. I think Youtube could use a little boost in the amount of videos and a little more promotion would probably go a long way.

I know social media is all the rage now, and these little issues should be fixed but with that said, Michelle and her team are easily accessible via their contact form or directly via phone.

Digging deeper.

Digging deeper into the site, you'll find other sections that are very useful and informative. The FAQ section addresses questions about home staging as well as about the process that Moving Mountains design uses to deliver their service. These are all questions that most inquisitive buyers would have so it's nice to have them there without having to call and ask.

A section with a great portfolio lets you check out the work and several before and after examples are available for the different types of services that they offer.

One of the prominent calls to action beckons you with a question that many homeowners will have. Why isn't my house selling? And the three main factors in selling your house are explained on that page, Pricing, Marketing and Presentation. There is also a Home Staging Savings Calculator available which allows you to calculate how much money you would save if you stage your home when it is listed or if you wait until after you have listed it before you stage it.

Michelle's strongest suit and main service is staging and decorating homes to sell, but she also offers other lesser known services. I was surprised when I read about these because I would not have guessed them at all. For example, Color Consultation, Marital Transition Staging, and even Corporate or Commercial staging. Yeah... I did a double-take too, when I read the "marital transition staging" but once you read what this is, it will make perfect sense.

All in all, the site is good but it could use some work, but it is also effective and does the job. For example, the website doesn't provide a responsive design for mobile devices, or a mobile site. Granted, most people doing research to find a home stager are probably at home on their laptops or computer, but nowadays you can't neglect mobile. If it were me, I'd find a more creative way of watermarking the images or not watermark them at all. If someone wants to use your images for nefarious reasons, they're going to do it... very little you can do about it. But in the other hand, if I want to share your images on pinterest, or facebook or even twitter, I usually won't do them if there's a big watermark on them as it will tell my audience: this is solely promoting a product.

If it were my site, I would make sure all the forms work well and flawlessly since this is the main way for people to contact me. Second I would make sure my social links are active and take me to the right spot.

My closing thoughts.

I think overall the website is great. I don't know of a lot of other home stagers or interior decorators that have a website, much less a functional one. I think the key here is that the website delivers exactly what you need when you need it. Information about staging your house and a reliable, trustworthy company to do it for you. If I were to use these types of services I would seriously consider Moving Mountains Designs as my first choice!

The post Website Review – Moving Mountains Design appeared first on Digital Marketing Through Content & Influence.