The Land of Odds

09:32 am - Social Media Marketing

Social Media Magic Webinar
www.socialmediamagic.com 1-888-500-2380 currently offering free webinar but cost will be $149 soon.
Social Media is A conversation between multiple people. Social Networks, news and bookmarking, blogs, micro-blogging, Wiki’s, RSS feeds, uploaded photos, video clips.
Quote- Telling and selling is dead. Jim Stengal, Proctor and Gamble
Traditional marketing isn’t working like it used to. People want to do business with real people, people they trust, people they like.
87% trust a friend’s recommendation over a critic’s review –Marketing Sherpa
Visibility is about participation to 1- generate exposure for your business, 2-increase traffic, 3-build new business partnerships, 4-bring in new qualified leads.
Social Media Marketing Industry Report 2009, MarketTools
Make a commitment to doing it…social media marketing.
Best Practices 5 steps to success
1-strategy
2-establish presence- which sites are best for your business profile? Then continually build your network…a targeted audience…build relationships with those connections. Build personal relationships with those people. Open up, share your personal side. Best customers are often where you had personal relationships with them…talk about the ball game, etc.
3-expand reach-create strategic partnerships, identify and recruit influencers to spread your message, gain competitive intelligence across diverse audiences, be an industry leader not follower, get your message out to many—fast.
4-nurture relationships-on facebook, linkedin, twitter, plaxo, biznik, qalias, merchantcircle are major sites
5-properly maintain presence
Sniper practice=Identify the exact perfect audience for your business using the search feature in the site that you are on. Focus on building those people into your network. Focus on keywords in profiles or in conversations. Join conversation as a person…not as a business, help for free.
Where to begin? Top three are Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. There are other dominant Niche Sites which are bizik, F, plaxo, MerchantCircle, and QAlias. These are open to talking business where the other sites are looking for friends and are less direct in doing business. Be on all 8 of these sites. Make time to be on these.
1-Biznik is the best social media platform for b2b.
2-F is a fast-pitch networking for creating and distributing press releases. Also picked up by the offline media (television, radio, etc.)
3-Plaxo used as an online rolodex and is as big as Linked In.
4-MerchantCircle (do this one) indexes business fast on google
5-QAlias set up your name and it will google top
Big Three are
1-Twitter is everywhere now. A micro-blog (limit to 140 characters or less) Do-sound like someone who just happens to work at your company, put a friendly face on your product, answer and pose questions, announce sales, deals, news and updates, and build buzz for big releases or events. Don’t-sound like a press release or spam with constant links to your company website, either in tweets or private messages. Search your business on twitter and see what real people are talking about your business and talk to them. Elevate your business by talking about it.
2-LinkedIn, Facebook and Plaxo – create online profiles, share photos and videos, send private messages and instant messages, learn more about the people and organizations, join groups and gain fans, create a page to promote your brand, point your fans to your company blog or contest, encourage a discussion and participate frequently, explore targeted advertising opportunities. Don’t create a page and fail to maintain it, don’t try a hard sell approach, nor censor comment, nor spam friends and fans, nor post false information.
There is a time commitment. It takes about 32 hours per month per profile to properly maintain a profile. It takes about 80+ hours to be active on 6 prominent sites…you can do it yourself, hire an employee or hire a marketing firm.
Focus on what really works. Use the tools that help cut down your time managing your profiles. Best tool on Twitter is a person who can understand who knows what your target audience is and your stategy. Have a system in place, a schedule of what you are working on that day and assign specific tasks. It is better to pay by task not by hour if you are having an employee do it. Some outsourcing companies are www.authoritydomains., www.learn2linkonline.com and www.socialmediahost.com
Outsourcing can be expensive… then he starts selling his own business www.socialmediamagic.com which is a curriculum for teaching employees how to do social media marketing. See www.socialmediamagicu.com for information on that. Sounds like good training.

Oct 14,2009 dj

10:08 am - Ready to Work

I am nearing the end of a very focused training program in information technology. I started in January and have received four certifications that will help me land a job in this troubled economy. I have the I.T. experience and should be able to move ahead quickly.

The school has been Monday through Thursday eight-thirty to four-thirty plus a number of Fridays and early or late days. Also we are expected to do at least two hours of study every night but I usually need more than that. Weekends I spend at least eight hours studying. It has all been very exhausting.

This week and next are lots of tests. The school calls them Milestones but they really are just midterms. They are tough. After these tests, we are close to being ready to certify on Server 2008 Active Directory. The last class going through this program needed an additional month or two of daily study to be ready for this certification. It's a tough test.

I am just ready to be finished and in a job. I am tired of school and homework and really want to be working.

09:09 pm - Certs

I got CompTia A+, Cisco CCENT and MCTS:Vista...now working on MCITP:EST and MCTS:Server 2008

08:01 am - Poem

I fall into those eyes.
Deep, dark, enveloping.
A journey to understanding.
Embraced by a mystery.

I drop into the depths.
A soul craves recognition.
Speak to my fears.
Attention is the key.

I follow a pulse.
Down the chasm.
Wilting under confusion.
Is there an answer?

The Path comes to an end.
Understanding reaches out to me.
The message is garbled.
I turn and close my eyes.
-
DJ Klein 6.29.09
-

02:19 pm

Full on heavy into this schooling. There's not enough hours in the day to do all the labs that I should.

Curious. Who's actively reading my blog? I thought I'd lost most visitors.

09:30 pm - Certiport IC3 Certified

I've made it through the first of many testing segments on this New Horizon's career path I'll going through over the next nine months. The first month has been studying and testing for the IC3 exams (Certiport). There are three tests and I received a 100%, a 89% and and 84% on them. I had to pass 2 of the three to move on into the next segment of the career path and I passed all three. You have to pass with either an 80% or 75% depending upon which segment of the test you are taking. I did good. I'm ready to move on.

After passing the test, we were given an 1100 page book that we will use over the next five weeks. We'll have to pass two exams to get A+ Certified (CompTIA). I figure that this 1100 page book means I've got roughly 80 pages a night to read from this book, in addition to whatever other book they'll load us up with during those weeks.

This is certainly a RAMROD way of learning and I hope I can keep up with the reading.

dj

06:33 pm - Netified

I finally neti-potted for the first time. I’ve had sinus issues for years and years…truly all my life. Within only the last five or so years, I’ve seen advertised an item called a Neti Pot which is used to clean out your sinuses by gravity rather than using sinus sprays and forcefully sniffing them up.

It took me a little bit of finesse to figure out what exactly the directions expected me to do. Simple things like “where do I put my tongue” and “how do I keep it from draining through my mouth” were answered after a bit of trial and error.

I can tell you though, after only two uses, I can promise you that this will be a life long habit, second to brushing my teeth. If you have sinus issues, I fully recommend this little trick. The pot was only around $12 and I’ll just have to buy finely grained sea salt once I run out of the premeasured packets.

11:25 am - The First Sneeze

A week ago Friday, I had sinus surgery. I made it to school this week but was really dragging and suffering. My classmates gave me plenty of sympathy. A couple of them had actually had the same procedures done so they really knew what I was up against. Thursday morning, in study hall, I was clicking away on a computer tutorial when all of a sudden a sneeze popped out. I went all dizzy and light headed, and was afraid I was going to fall out of my chair. As I opened my eyes many moments later, I realized that the entire class had their eyes focused on me and not a word was being said. I think they were waiting for me to pass out. I felt very cared for at that moment.

07:20 pm - Eyes wide open

Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you catch a persons glance from across the room, you can easily hold eye contact for a few moments but with other people, your eyes have to flit away immediately? There is one guy in class who catches my eye on occasion and we both seem to sigh with exhaustion and mutual sympathy for the learning process. It's like a conversation. But heaven forbid, should I meet eyes with another guy to his right, both our eyes dart away as if we were caught doing something nasty.

06:00 pm - School

Hi Everyone. I thought I'd throw an update out here. I quit my job in September (YES!!!in this economy!) and had a tough time landing something (go figure!) and have ended up registering for a 9 month intensive career program at New Horizon's Learning Center. I've been going for nearly a month and passed two tests. One more and I'll get some kind of certification so I can tack letters onto the end of my name....welll, not really but almost. By the end of this hugely difficult program, I'll have a Cisco, CompTIA and Microsoft certification. That will make me much more marketable in the I/T world. I'm loving it. It's amazing how much I already know and how many gaps I have in my brain for revelant stuff. Wish me luck.

DJ

08:59 pm - Writer's Block: Open Arms

07:42 am - Beach Vacation

My son and I went on a lovely little mini-vacation last week. He didn’t have school Thursday and Friday because it was the end of a grading period so we went to the coast. I had wanted to stay in a yurt because I’ve never done that so back in July I started checking the online reservation system and found that all weekends were already reserved. That’s when I thought, “Hey? What about those odd days in the middle of the year that they are out of school?” so I found the earliest one and reserved the yurt for last Wednesday night and Thursday night.

We left as soon as he was out of school and got to the camp, Cape Lookout, about 4:30. No one was at the check in booth. They have gone to off season hours and are only there between 9 and 10am. I read the sign on the window about the reserved yurts and my name wasn’t there! Uh oh…I hadn’t brought proof of the reservation because our printer is dead. As I was trying to figure out what to do, a couple campers walked by and suggested that I go talk to the camp host and pointed me in the direction of his campsite.

The camp host was very nice and friendly and offered an upgrade just for the night to an open cabin since all the yurts were already taken. He said that he didn’t know if the park ranger would have to charge the difference in price between the cabin rental and the yurt rental but I was willing to take the chance.

With the yurt, we had expected a canvas building, with a wood floor, a futon and a bunk bed, a heater and a light in the middle of the ceiling…that’s it. Instead we got a 13x13’ deluxe cabin complete with refrigerator, microwave, television, toilet!, shower and three rooms (bedroom, kitchen/living room, and bathroom). This was very luxurious “camping”.

We dumped our sleeping bags and clothing bags in the cabin and headed off for dinner. We had planned on having clam chowder in bread bowls at our favorite restaurant but found out it had been sold and was now a fancy Italian restaurant. Not too fancy though, we weren’t out of place in our casual clothing better suited for playing at the beach. My son had ravioli and bread and an Italian soda and I had halibut and chips, and a glass of wine and a cup of clam chowder.

After a very filling meal, we went back and played at the beach for awhile. The cabin faced the ocean and from our front window or from the bench on the covered porch, you could watch the waves. We did use those viewing points a few times during intermittent rain showers but most of the time we just headed to the beach when it suited our fancy.

During one rain shower, we went for a drive and did a little shopping. We picked up a DVD since the TV didn’t have reception and we picked up a pail for making sand castles and a few things we hadn’t planned on, like ice cream (since we had a freezer in the room) and a couple post cards to send my family in the military and wood for a fire in the fire pit that night.

I would have wandered around art galleries but my son was worried about the ice cream melting and quite honestly, art galleries aren’t his thing. We got back to the cabin, wrote the post cards and when I glanced out the window, I saw the sun! I shouted, “It’s sunny, let’s go to the beach!” and we did. It was a break in between two rain storms so I kept a close eye on the clouds but we got a good couple hours on the beach before the next shower hit. We made it back to our cabin before getting wet.

We went to a fish hatchery and fed about 30 rainbow trout. They were at least 12 inches long, though most were more like 30 inches long and they were quite fat. They jumped and competed for the food and splashed us a couple times. It was fun.

We also went to the Pioneer Museum in Tillamook. We’ve driven by it a number of times and always said that we should visit it but hadn’t. This time, we made a point of it and found it to be one of the best museums we’ve seen in a long time. They have such a variety of collections, carriages, dolls, butterflies, guns, arrowheads, washing machines, stuffed animals and birds…it was really lovely.

The whole two days were just packed with fun and laughter and quite a few “High Fives” from my son. We had a lot of fun.

06:16 am - Birthday Present to Myself

Well, I've done it. After 10 years with a company, I've given my two week notice. All I can say is that I am incredibly relieved and scared at the same time. Wish me luck in job search!

10:53 pm - Mind Map

( Click here to see! )

10:46 pm - What country am I?

You Are China

You adhere to the ideas of loyalty, honesty, sincerity, and duty. You respect authority and age. You believe in social harmony. You are big and bold. People consider you to be someone with a lot of potential. You are coming into your own right now, and you are figuring out your place in the world.

04:56 pm

test

12:17 pm - Willamette River Canoe Trip

We had a few more rapid areas that first day but nothing as monumental as the confluence of the Willamette and the Santiam. We were getting better at reading the river and knowing to stay on the ugly side for swifter currents and thus, less muscle power to get further distances. Randy had his GPS tethered to the transom and regularly called out miles per hour. We ranged between 3mph just drifting and waiting for others to catch up with us, to 7mph while in a strong current or power paddling to race a nearby canoe team.

Paddling isn’t all paddling, if that could make any sense. Basically you keep your paddle in the water but sometimes you put more muscle behind it to move you faster or in a different direction. Sometimes you can get into a lovely rhythm with stroke, stroke, and stroke for a good 15 minutes and use your arms, shoulders, torso, and hips. That’s when the current is the same and there are no hazards to avoid and no change in direction to make. After awhile you get into a trance, hypnotized by the water, your movement, the sound of your breathing and you just go with it. Your partner might notice that you’re way ahead of the pack and comment, “Let’s hold up a bit.” So you pull your paddle out and lay it across your legs and just drink in the beauty of the water, the birds, the sun shining, the smell of the fields and trees nearby but quite shortly after, you find that you’ve placed your paddle back into the water and started paddling again, even though you’re supposed to be stopped waiting for the others.

For lunch that first day, we pulled into Riverfront Park in Corvallis. It’s a simple city park right on the water. I had made all the lunches for the adults and two sisters who had joined us, so my first task was to set up a small table and get the food out of the bucket and ice chest. Since it was the first day out, we had fresh lunch meat and real bread instead of canned or dried meat and crackers or tortillas. I was pretty pleased with the lunches that I had planned, and put together. I made 50 lunches for just under $100. The hardest part was that I needed to pack for varying tastes. We had three women, 2 teenaged girls and 5 hungry men. I did very good and got plenty of compliments on the meals. One girl was especially pleased that I had individually packaged the snack type food so she could just tuck it into her day pack for later in the day.

After lunch, some of the adults walked up to Safeway for something, one family walked over to Dairy Queen and the majority of the boy scouts did a litter patrol on the park which desperately needed it. Three adults stayed with the boys and kept them from getting off task and start doing “boy things” as one mother put it. You know, that tree toppled into the water just up the bank from our canoes really looked like a fun thing to push around, and those bailers we had brought along were really just funny shaped water guns and well, how many sticky pop cans could we throw at that duck before it moved off its nest….

I stayed behind and watched the boys from a distance. I pulled out my soprano recorder and played a few tunes. I complimented a girl in the park on her lovely orange tinted sunglasses, which she promptly pulled off and had me try on. They were quite fun. They made everything look bright and beautiful and well, for want of a better term, psychedelic. She and I talked for a bit then she locked up her bike and walked down to the water. I say her on our way out down by the bank feeding some of those ducks. She looked so happy and peaceful.

(more to come)

10:32 am - Quiet Night

It’s quiet without my son this week. He’s away at church camp. My daughter is still around somewhat. She’s due to leave in a couple weeks but she’s 18 and active with friends and physical training for Navy so I really don’t see a lot of her.

Last night, I logged onto our bedroom desktop computer because our laptop is having some problems. I checked email and played a couple games of Drop Out at www.orangeshark.com . That game is rather addictive and I can really kill some time playing it. I usually stop playing when my eyes start to go buggy, but last night, after a couple games I heard a knock at the front door.

The dog jumped off my lap and ran to the front door to see who it was. He’s 76 pounds so it was took my legs awhile to wake up and get moving. By the time I got to the door, Clyde (the dog) was wagging his stub and generally pleased to smell whoever was on the other side of the door.

It was Kurt, who is a friend of the family. He’s an electrician and had got a call from my husband right before his flight out that we had a couple problems in the kitchen. I hadn’t bothered calling Kurt myself because the two overhead lights in the kitchen weren’t working. I figured Kurt was very regular at checking in on us while hubby is gone and I’d just wait to ask him about the problem when he showed up the next time. Meanwhile I had moved a standing lamp into the kitchen as a temporary solution. Kurt was able to determine that the problem was not with the switches but probably with the wiring in the attic. He had put in an 11 hour work day already so asked if I could wait a little longer in getting the lights back to working. He wasn’t in the mood to climb through our attic. I said that I didn’t mind in the least and offered him a drink

We talked for a good hour before he got a call from our neighbor Neil who had seen his rig parked on the street and wanted to ask him about some dead cat on his lawn. That sounds so funny. It really sounds like the Griswold’s in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Neil is a touch squeamish about dead animals, while Kurt is an avid hunter. I don’t know how the cat died and ended up on Neil’s lawn but Kurt went over there and removed it for Neil.

I went back to the bedroom and played a few more games of Drop Out, chatted with a few online friends and surfed a bit on moving to Dubai, which is possibility in my future. Other than the visit from Kurt, it was a lonely night and I know I’ll have plenty more this year.

07:58 pm - Scouts

So last night was a touch annoying. My son is away at church camp so there was no need for me to be the "parent in charge" for scouts so I dropped by a friends house to send him to scouts with a receipt that needed to be turned in...and was confronted by two scouts sans parents looking for a ride to the meeting which was 15 minutes away. I love the boys and love the scouts and ended up ferrying three, count them, three scouts to their sacred meeting...and waited the two hours while they met...archery it was, well worth not missing...so yeah, did I mention that my son was away at church camp?

07:50 pm - Writers Block