Archive for the ‘Ventura County’ Category

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

[Cross posted to www.jesseluna.com]

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[I originally wrote this during Thanksgiving of 2008 but this still applies today. I mention "fans" here but by that I mean super loyal customers.]

It’s great seeing all the Thanksgiving thank you messages on social network sites like Twitter and Facebook. So how can you say “Thanks” to your fans?

Here are two quick examples:

1. ROLL CALL

Internet Marketing expert Douglas Karr extended a special Thank You to all his blog Commenters by listing them on today’s blog post. He listed them in order of how active they’ve been on his site.

Wouldn’t you rather comment on a site that listens to you and appreciates your comments? I would!

Thank You message from Douglas Karr

2. MAKE YOUR FANS FAMOUS

Here’s an offline example of how to thank your fans. Make your fans famous and post pictures of them!

My favorite little burger place in Ventura, CA is BJ’s. They have great burgers and have lots of loyal customers. When the shop changed ownership, they wanted to keep the regulars coming back so they started posting pictures of folks. The picture below is a bit dark because it was raining but there were still people standing out there to look for their friends and relatives on the picture board.

Loyal customers can see thier pictures on BJ's fan board

Do you have any other great ideas for saying Thanks to your fans? Let me know in the comments.

Would you like to be a part of Build Your Fan Base? Post a link to one of your pictures and a link to your blog/site and I’ll post your picture to my new Fans Only page.

Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving to all who celebrate it.

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There’s nothing wrong with using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. In fact, Twitter recently changed its pages to use more SEO friendly page titles to get better “Google juice.”

But if that’s your only focus then you can end up going down
some unsavory paths.


There are large companies out there that will help your site improve its Google rankings by creating multiple blog sites, each containing blog posts on various random topics (because they serve many different clients), and include links back to your site.

In the long run, this strategy will not serve you.

Sometimes the “SEO-optimized” blog post will end up complete gibberish because it’s main job is to associate a set of keywords back to the main client site.

It might help your Google search rankings for a bit, but it will mostly help damage your brand.

Nowadays, blogging is easier than ever. Use your blog to share your expertise and attract fans. Remember, content is still king.

[Photo courtesy of @Vermyndax via his blog]

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